Nine volunteers got the opportunity to learn all about the card game “Peace Please” in Latvia, a game that was developed to engage organisations in building a Culture or Peace in their team/work place. The Latvian organisation Radi Vidi Pats developed this game together with SVAG-PeacePower and three other organisations from Poland, Greece and the UK during 2020-22. This activity was supported by the National Agency for Adult Education of Erasmus+ in The Netherlands.

During this visit from the 27th of July to the 1st of August our volunteers learned about the history of the game, key methods underlying its mechanism (Sociocracy and Nonviolent Communication), how to facilitate it and how it has been used by Radi Vidi Pats and their associates. They engaged with many locals and internationals at a festival about democracy and heard from an educator how she set-up a reserach to measure the impact on the Peace Please game on the micro-environment in Latvian schools.

A short outline of the activity:

26th of July: arrival in Latvia, Sabile (country side)
27th + 28th: workshops & game sessions
29th+30th: participation at the Democracy Festival in Kuldiga. (Kuldīga is an ancient town in Latvia’s western region of Kurzeme with distinctive architecture, which is a candidate for inclusion in the list of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.)
31st+1st: game play sessions with partners of Radi Vidi Pats in the city Liepaja.

The Peace Please game is based on the eight areas of a Culture of Peace as defined by the UN (see image below), which were translated into the context of organisations.
The game is cooperative and stirs discussions by several challenge cards, which need to be overcome by collectively agreeing on two action cards that respond to the challenge on the table. This way players explore a wide range of possible actions, which they can consider when a challenging situation happens in real life.

Have a look at our website to see the rules of the game and the guide and check-out this video.