United Nations (UNAMI), Iraq

Building rehearsal systems for civic participation and youth-led climate action (2021-2023).

Quick facts

  • Role: Immersive storytelling advisor / trainer

  • Focus: Game design, immersive experience design, and Discord-based transmedia ("multiverse") storytelling

  • Engagement formats: Alternative Reality Game (ARG) pilots, youth hackathons, training labs, and ongoing mentoring

  • Geography: Multi-city participation across Iraq (including programs in the Kurdistan Region and beyond)

The strategic question

How do you strengthen youth civic engagement in a complex environment-especially when politics feels abstract, trust is fragile, and the future is experienced as constraint?

UNAMI's approach used a powerful premise: if people can rehearse decisions inside a designed world, they can build the confidence, language, and relationships required to act in the real one.

Group of nine people sitting around a table inside a restaurant, with two women standing, one in a red top, the other in a black top. All are smiling, with drinks and playing cards on the table. Two television screens display a soccer player in the background, and a large wall with seating chart numbers is visible in the background.

The simulation layer (what we built)

• An Alternative Reality Game (ARG) framework to turn civic challenges into navigable story problems.

• Youth hackathons to convert narrative insight into collaborative projects and proposals.

• Discord-based transmedia collaboration ("multiverse storytelling") to sustain community, roles, and participation over time.

• Role-play and game-based facilitation to help participants test choices safely and practice cooperation across differences.

People sitting outdoors at night under umbrellas, participating in an event with balloons, while a man stands in front of them.

What made it work (design principles)

• Safety-by-design: rehearsal environments where disagreement can be held without collapse.

• Legible roles: participants know how to enter, contribute, and lead without needing permission from a single authority.

• Shared language: turning abstract issues (like climate, governance, and civic responsibility) into actionable narrative frames.

• Continuity: a world that persists across sessions so learning accumulates rather than resets.

An art gallery with a large black and white drawing on the wall and a floor. People are sitting around a man who is reading or explaining something, with a woman sitting on a cushion on the floor and others seated on the ground.

Outcomes (impact framing)

• Capacity building for youth teams in pervasive game design, transmedia storytelling, and collaborative leadership.

• Cross-city collaboration and relationship building through shared play and structured creative work.

• A model for civic engagement that prioritizes agency and trust rather than compliance.

Group of people celebrating, some holding Kurdish and Iraqi flags, indoors with banners in the background.

What institutions learn from this case

• Education becomes more powerful when it is experiential, social, and role-based.

• In fragile contexts, rehearsal is not a luxury-it is a trust-building infrastructure.

• Digital platforms can sustain civic collaboration when they are treated as worlds with rules, not just communication tools.

A man in a blue shirt standing in front of a classroom giving a presentation to students seated at tables, some with laptops, in a room with a high ceiling, black ceiling, and walls, with a white projection screen and various signs.

Practical takeaway

In fragile or distributed contexts, participation lasts when people enter a world with legible roles, continuity, and safe rehearsal.

If your institution needs participation that lasts, build a world people can inhabit-then rehearse inside it.

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