About Building Resilience

Today’s youth have an online world of opinions, science, myths, and facts at the fingertips. They must learn to think critically in this online world, build skills and confidence to find and discuss facts, and learn to respect the opinions of others.

Building Resilience will help students appreciate the complexity of climate change while building the skills, knowledge, and confidence needed to take action. Students will develop a stakeholder character to research and apply their learning. They are evaluated on their ability to create a realistic character, and correctly identify their contribution to community sustainability. Students then use their character in the “Resilient Empire” deck-building game. The character who best invests their time and money into building resilience, wins.

An card showing the example Livestock Producer stakeholder card

Part 1: Students as Stakeholders

The Building Resilience program has students represent various sectors and stakeholders in a climate change scenario. By completing the Character Development worksheet, they will:

Research the Stakeholder. Find out who they are and what they do.
Character Development. Students develop a persona, understanding how their character is impacted by the social, economical, and environmental impacts of climate change.
Fake News Test. Students present their character in a Fake News test- sharing 2 truths and one lie they have researched and developed. Students gain points for the Resilient Empire Game.

The Character Development worksheet should be completed and submitted for evaluation, prior to the Resilient Empire Game.

Part 2: Resilience Empire Game

Can climate change education be fun? It can with this deck-building game! Using their own character, students are now responsible for investments and actions to build personal sustainability. Their actions may also impact their fellow players. At the end of the game, the student with the most economic, social, environmental, and resilience points wins.

Curriculum Connections

Building Resilience suits students in grades 7-12. Specifically:

Science 10	Unit D: Energy Flow in Global Systems
Science 30	Unit D: Energy and the Environment
Career and Technology Students	Researching occupational roles in environment, primary resources, agriculture, and more.
Environment and Outdoor Education	Build understanding of personal and community roles in climate change and conservation.

21st Century Competencies: Know how to learn; think critically, identify and solve complex problems; manage information, demonstrate global and cultural understanding, demonstrate good communication skills, and the ability to work cooperatively with others.

This program, or just the Resilient Empire Game, is also great for eco-clubs.

Ready to Play?

The Building Resilience program is available to classrooms throughout Alberta, free of charge.

To access this program, submit a Building Resilience program request through this Google Form.

Once your request has gone through, a Resilient Empire game will be sent to you. You will also be sent the the program materials including the classroom presentation, character development worksheet and evaluation page through a Google Drive link.