International Storytelling Center named winner of Peacebuilding Challenge

Purdue Peace Project and the Alliance for Peacebuilding recently named the International Storytelling Center as the winner of Purdue’s Peacebuilding Challenge, an event designed to encourage innovative ideas in peacebuilding with the purpose of reducing armed conflict.

Kiran Singh Sirah, director of the International Storytelling Center, which is based in Tennessee, attended the announcement on May 10 on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus.

The International Storytelling Center’s proposal details a plan to develop a state-of-the-art video game that “gamifies storytelling,” according to the center’s website.

The Peacebuilding Challenge is designed to find big ideas that have real potential, are novel and ambitious, and are likely to be widely used. The International Storytelling Center will receive $10,000 in recognition of its big idea and the idea will be widely publicized. The prize will cover the costs of the initial concept of the video game project and a 2020 pilot will take place in east Tennessee and Melton, Australia.

The video game project is tentatively called “Europa” and the center hopes to attract a new audience to be a “powerful force for social change.”

The challenge is funded by Milt Lauenstein, a Purdue alumnus, business leader and promoter of world peace and is open to individuals at least 18 years of age and teams and organizations worldwide. 

Source: Krista Kelley, operations manager at Purdue Policy Research Institute, kokelley@purdue.edu