GAP Project
The GAP curriculum, assessment and learning materials will be finalized by the end of the project, end of February, 2019.
Personnel deployed on Conflict Prevention and Peace Building (CPPB) missions, particularly in high risk areas, need to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to perform successfully from the start of their tour of duty in the respective CSDP mission or operation. The Gaming for Peace (GAP) project proposes to fill recognised training gap; embedding a base curriculum of soft skills (communication and cooperation) that facilitates coordination and relationship building in an environment of organisational, gender and cultural diversity.
The EU has been involved in 34 CPPB missions in three continents since 2003, deploying 150,000 personnel from militaries, police, civilian and non-governmental organizations. The trend in number and scale of missions is moving upwards, and the problems underlying these missions are becoming more complex and challenging for the EU to respond to strategically and operationally. Training large numbers of personnel from different organizations and nations is an enormous challenge, in terms of logistics and cost.
New training curricula for enhancing the preparedness and skills of personnel for conflict prevention and peace keeping missions especially in high risk countries contributes to more efficient and effective conflict prevention and peace keeping missions. Ultimately, this should reduce the costs of such missions, whilst at the same time contribute to a more efficient implementation of the CSDP.
Objective
The Primary aims of GAP are twofold
1. To coordinate between various organisations, including peace building stakeholders, policy makers and other international research projects past and current, to conduct a rigorous assessment of current knowledge and existing training related to conflict prevention and peace building in order to capture current best practice. Through broad consultation and review of relevant documentation we will identify current gaps in training for the soft skills needed to perform successfully in multicultural EU missions which manifest diverse understanding of operations, gender and culture;
2. In response to identified training needs, to develop an innovative base curriculum and tool for delivery and further development of that base curriculum through the design and play of a multiple player online role playing game. The game will thus be both an innovative tool for delivering training and crucially, a new model in curriculum development as the base curriculum, informed by the state of the art in soft skills relevant for CPPB missions and delivered through a Serious Game, will be continuously developed and refined as players play the game both in the development process in the GAP project and after, in real world training
