Mr. Sreeram Kongeseri, Senior Consultant, AMMACHI Labs (Amrita Multi Modal Applications Using Computer & Human Interaction), and Christopher Coley, Project Manager, Center for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Amritapuri, presented a paper on “Games for Community Development and Problem Solving: A Multi-site Case Study” at the Annual Recent Research in Social Sciences International Conference (SOCSIC 2017) held at Bangkok, from 5^th September to 7^th September, 2017.  

Empowerment interventions often take a long time to see results. One of the major constraints is the time necessary to build relationships and trust between community stakeholders in order to discuss and design interventions. There is a huge need for a low risk, low barrier platform for facilitating this process. In the paper presented at the conference, the use of games as a platform to facilitate this process by taking advantage of the ‘magic circle of play’ most games produce, was explained. Results of the test done at multiple sites across India were also presented.