Grantee Spotlight on Game to Grow
Meet one of our amazing Play it Forward Fund recipients: Game to Grow! This innovative organization harnesses the power of games for therapeutic, educational, and community growth.
Game to Grow is dedicated to the use of games for therapeutic, educational, and community growth. Through comprehensive training programs, Game to Grow empowers mental health professionals, educators, and community advocates to use game-based strategies in their work. They've even developed Critical Core, a beginner's box specifically designed for therapeutically applied role-playing games.
Their shift in 2024 to focus on expanding the implementation of game-based support programs worldwide means their impact will reach thousands more individuals through the power of intentional play
Our Interview with Game to Grow
Gamers Engaged: How will this Play-it-Forward grant support your organization?
Game to Grow: This grant will go toward supporting our small but mighty team of uniquely skilled people as we bring our work to communities worldwide through our training programs and more locally through our hospital gaming program!
Gamers Engaged: What's your vision for the future?
Game to Grow: A game in every classroom, clinic, hospital and home. We are focusing on this in the next few years by expanding our hospital gaming program where we bring our virtual therapeutic Critical Core games to hospitalized youth who are often physically and socially isolated during their hospital stays.
Gamers Engaged: What opportunities does your organization offer for community engagement?
Game to Grow: Games are often still thought of as being purely for entertainment's sake, so please share the word about how life changing they can be! We invite you to look into being trained or encouraging a local organization to go through our trainings in the Game to Grow method!
Gamers Engaged: What makes you stand out from the crowd?
Game to Grow: This field is still relatively new and so there aren't a lot of other organizations doing what we do! We have found a robust variety of ways to implement The Game to Grow Method.
This approach uniquely synthesizes expertise in family therapy, education, and drama therapy with the creative potential found in gaming.
We’ve supported thousands of therapists, educators, and community members around the world to use the Game to Grow Method. Our last training had people from Australia and parts of Europe pulling all-nighters just to be a part of it!
Gamers Engaged: What's something really cool you have done in the past year?
Game to Grow: We trained over 100 of Washington State's Librarians librarians to use tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) to foster community and combat loneliness and isolation. We can't wait to hear back from them on the campaigns they will run in their local branches.
