Camino – Paulander Community Centre

Camino Wellbeing + Mental Health in Kitchener, Ontario, is a non-profit organization that provides initiatives to individuals, families and communities to improve mental health and well-being. The Paulander Avenue Community Centre was suggested to us as the best location within the Camino Wellbeing + Mental Health Organization for a board game collection in initial meetings with Camino staff as it already hosted weekly drop-in session for local youth.

In consultation with Paulander staff members, we designed a board game collection to be used within a weekly drop-in program aimed older children and youth (8 to 12+ years old). Drop-in sessions ran for roughly 1 hour and were generally unstructured with time split between snacks and playing games. Each session was staffed with at least one main staff member and a number of student volunteers. Being a drop-in program, the number of children and youth attending could vary quite a bit from 2 to 10 or more children. Some children were newcomers to Canada and English language learners and literacy levels varied as a result.

In addition to a first meeting with staff members to show them a broad variety of games to come up with a preliminary collection to try out, we visited several times with each group to trial games and refine the collection to those that worked well and that were liked and received well by the children. Space was very limited in the community center in terms of both storage and space to play the games, which needed to be taken into account. Small tables were available for games to played on. Below we list the considerations that we ultimately took into account in deciding which games to include in both collections. You will also find a Table listing all the boardgames and accompanying materials we developed that are openly available to all.

The materials here are provided openly for other interested schools and community locations to use and adapt according to a CC BY-NC license, unless stated otherwise. This license allows re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. (The creator for the text of these materials should be indicated to be Daniela O'Neill. Some items may have other stated attributions, such as photographs or drawings for which sources and any applicable permissions are noted).

Note that you can find other materials, such as 5 bright posters about the value of board game play and a pamphlet of tips for parents playing with young children, in our Library Section.

Some of the most important considerations, that led to either a game being included or not included in the Game On program collection, were:

• A small space overall (a town-house with 2 smaller rooms) limited the number of games that could be played at one time and the size of the games and the collection given storage space limitations
• Drop-in style program meant attendance could fluctuate from 2 to 10+ and so 2-player games were included along with larger player count games
• Could be learned and played quickly
• No reading or only limited reading needed to play; games with simpler Quick Start instructions
• Lighter games that allowed conversations to happen while playing
• Could accommodate children of varying ages playing together
• As in all our collections, we avoided any games with commercial or popular culture themes that might limit conversation if not familiar to all children, games with noisy elements, and games with parts that could get used up (e.g., dry erase markers)
• As in all our collections, we prioritized high-quality, durable games with beautiful aesthetics and art to provide more for players to see and talk about

At the request of staff about a year later, given requests from the children for more UNO type card games to play (with a request for UNO No Mercy! In particular), we also later also provided them with this game, ONO99 and Go Fish Yuk!.

“The games have been a big hit with our Paulander Game On group! They have really enjoyed playing the new games but have definitely been gravitating towards certain ones so I am trying to have them expand and play the less played games. I was able to play Wavelength with the youth in two teams and make it a group activity so that was an unexpected way I have been able to use one of the games and they really enjoyed that. I think that the other games are more unfamiliar to them or they are longer and so the youth may be more intimidated to try them out but they did enjoy them when you folks came and showed them how to play. Luckily we have not had any game pieces go missing and the youth have been pretty good at sharing so I don’t think there should be a need for doubles of games.

Games they enjoy & play often:

• Diced Veggies
• Pizza Party
• Go Nuts for Donuts
• Uno
•  Snakes and Ladders
• Onitama

We are so grateful for your contributions to the Paulander Community Centre and you folks are always welcome to come back and hangout with us at group! The games have definitely helped bring the youth together as well as a good bonding activity for our volunteers to make relationships with the youth."

6 months later, they reached out to ask for a few more games. In response, we provided UNO No Mercy, ONO99, and Go Fish Yuk!. (Due to time constraints and lack of full pre-testing of these games, we have only to date added Go Fish Yuk! to other collections as an original version of Go Fish was no longer available.)

“I hope you are well. I wanted to give you a quick update that the kids are still loving all of the board games you folks provided for us. We are still slowly but surely learning all the rules! I wanted to follow up with you to see if your team had any other versions of Uno available. The kids had been talking about Uno No Mercy or any other editions of uno outside of the original that you folks gave us last year.”