How 30+ Years of Sustainability Work Evolved into Ecogames
- Jul 30
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
After more than three decades working in sustainable development and disaster management across Indonesia, the team at Alam Santi faced an important question: how do you share what you've learned in a way that mainstreams and sticks?
Thinking back over the years of hundreds of programs implemented, the answer turned out to be games.
Why We Started Ecogames
The Alam Santi founding team members have worked across sustainable development and disaster risk reduction (DRR) for over 30 years. This work has ranged from earthquake, landslide and tsunami responses to cross-cutting school programs, eco-friendly community recovery and development design, and climate awareness work. The participatory approaches they developed always put collaboration with stakeholders, communities, government agencies, and schools at the forefront of their initiatives. Alongside this work, Alam Santi holds a formal MOU with BRIN, Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency, for a national study on gamified education tools for climate resilience. Alam Santi was also commissioned to develop the Nusantara Curriculum through the Nusantara Capital Authority (OIKN) and the Asian Development Bank.
Across that work, one thing became clear: information alone doesn't create change. Experience, leadership, and collaboration do. People rarely remember the subtle aspects of a lecture or a leaflet. What really sticks is the moment they were laughing, exploring, or solving a problem together.
This is why Ecogames came to be: it's a growing library of games that turn complex environmental and social challenges into learning experiences that people actually remember, built for everyone from young students to corporate leaders.
What Alam Santi's Ecogames Initiative Offers
Custom Educational Game Design. Working with an organisation's own mission or message, our design team can help you transform your project's mission into a dynamic engagement game from concept through prototype to final delivery.
A Growing Library of 60+ Games and Classroom Tools. Covering the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, disaster risk reduction and community resilience, plastic pollution, ocean conservation, and climate change and nature-based learning. Through partnerships including the Emmanuel Foundation's Innovative Schools Programme, these games have reached over 1,750 teachers across Indonesia, and become a regular favourite with primary school children at Green School Bali.
How Our Games Deliver Impact
Ecogames' games are built to promote empathy and teamwork, build systems thinking and problem-solving skills, spark curiosity and reflection, and give players a concrete way to act on what they've learned.
We've seen a single session of play shift how a group thinks and works together, often bridging generations, communities, and sectors. When people play, they connect. When they connect, change becomes possible.
If you work with schools, governments, or other organisations and want to deliver sustainability education that people actually remember, get in touch to talk through what Alam Santi & Ecogames could offer.