Part B- Reflections on 'Ayiti- the Cost of Life'

After playing ‘Ayiti- the Cost of Life’ game, it made me open my eyes and see a different perspective. This game showed me how people living in Haiti struggled to maintain their needs. The details in this game basically show how a real-life person in Haiti endures hardships while trying to have an average life. It is a ‘strategic game’ which means choosing a strategy that would work would be the key to win this game. This game is not difficult but provoking in many ways. This game is not difficult if you have used the right strategy but if you mislead in a single click, you might go the wrong way and end up living in poverty. In the beginning of this game, it showed how you can choose the ‘game-playing strategy’. There are four choices, health, happiness, education and money. I chose on an education strategy because I thought it would be the best way to win this game. In my opinion if I choose health, it would be more difficult since there’s a higher probability that my family is going to get sick. If I chose happiness, it wouldn’t really be possible since my family would have to work study and get sick so I thought it would be hard to get them happy. Also, for me, choosing a money strategy would not be a good strategy since you have to buy things, pay for education and pay for the medical needs. Whilst playing the game, what I did was roughly was to rely on my family members health and their money. I tried to combine work and education and have that balance. I make the parents and the eldest child work while the young girl and boy went to school. Sometimes all the family members worked but when one or two of them get sick, I would send them home to rest or to the clinic. When I have enough money, I would get the children to study while the rest worked. When I don’t have enough money, I made all of them work. If the time is right, I would place one adult, either the mom or the dad, to school for studies. I ended up playing this game based on their health and money and to put any members to school whenever possible. Parents would put a lot of effort for the children to earned knowledge and study because some of the jobs require education. Obstacles like having not enough money and low on health are obstacles that keep the children from going to school. Access to education is a challenge that LEDC’s try to develop because people need significant amount of money and people living in LEDC countries, does not have enough of money. When people have education and knowledge, they would end up helping the country to be more developed. For example, if a young girl had the right education and gained the right knowledge to be a doctor. She would grow up to be a successful doctor and would contribute to the country. And so the country would be more developed. Countries could prioritize education by making education the number one important things needed to be done. Also making the price of education to be lower down and therefore everyone could get education. And that the government should provide a lot of teachers. Haiti MDG progress so far is looking okay but many needs to be worked on. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and environmental sustainability should be the targets that are needed to be achieved in the next 5 years. Also forth education, it is improving but hasn’t been achieved so I think this progress should continue until it is achieved. From the MDG showed on Haiti, these are the goals needed to be achieved and fast in 5 years.