Can tossing penguins lead to youth civic engagement? (Alex Keefe/MNS)
WASHINGTON –When 27-year-old Eric Heis, of Arlington, decided to teach his peers about fiscal responsibility, he turned to a game known as “Penguin Toss.”
Players control a yeti-like character that plucks a penguin from an icy pond, whips it around and hurls it into the air. The higher it goes, the more points you score. “It’s a dumb game without any point whatsoever except increasing your point value,” said Heis, who works at a Washington think tank.
Nonetheless, Heis noticed that young staffers on Capitol Hill had a lot more fun playing mindless games like Penguin Toss on their smart phones than reading his think tank’s policy papers.
So Heis came up with an idea for a game that could both entertain and teach the under-30 set about taxes and fiscal policy.
“You know, a ‘Governor Toss,'” Heis said. “Where you add to the state budget, you improve things that can get the governor farther, for example.”
Heis is now vying for a $25,000 grant from Mobilize.org, a Washington-based youth advocacy organization. The group is looking for technology-based ideas that can teach young people about fiscal responsibility, at either the personal or national level.
That could be a Facebook application that tracks youth-oriented bills in Congress, or a computer program that helps young adults set their money for charity.
But it’s crucial that the ideas come from the young people they’re designed to teach, said Ian Storrar, chief operating officer with Mobilize.org.
“If the communities we’re looking to help are not engaged in identifying the problem, they’re far less likely to be successful, because it’s easy for them to lose interest or for them to fail,” Storrar said.
Mobilize.org will announce the grant winners at a Chicago youth economic summit in November.