Board game to give kids anti-tobacco lesson

“This is Gujarat after all,and money is,well,we think this will work best here given the pervasive nose for business,” said Mayur Trivedi,assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health- Gandhinagar (IIPHG),who helped design the curriculum and train teachers on how to teach it effectively.

The anti-tobacco monopoly board game concept was borrowed from New Delhi-based NGO Hriday,which had experimented with a similar board game for schoolchildren in Tamil Nadu and Delhi. Abha Tiwari,a manager from Hriday,in fact conducted a training programme for teacher-trainers from six districts at Ahmedabad on Wednesday along with Trivedi.

“This will work. Gujaratis are vyaparis. We mean business,” said M P Mehta,a class 1 officer in the state’s education department who currently heads Kheda’s District Institute of Education and Training (DIET),at the training programne.

The state’s education and health departments had last year introduced the extra-curricular lessons to promote anti-tobacco awareness among school-children in six districts – Anand,Kheda,Banaskantha,Rajkot,Surat and Tapi. The curriculum included postcards,posters and text-books in Gujarati besides graphic board games.