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Oxfam meets FarmVille in real world charity game Raise The Village

Taking cash from your touchscreen to Uganda

Oxfam meets FarmVille in real world charity game Raise The Village
|
iOS
| Raise The Village

While most publishers are rushing to freemium games in the hope of finding a large pot of gold, there's one game with a more worthy aim.

In many respects, Raise The Village is a typical FarmVille-style experience, getting you to create and customise your own African village, planting crops and caring for the villagers, while paying out small amounts of money in the process.

Doing the right thing

Unlike those other games however, Raise The Village feeds directly into the real world; in this case a village called Kapir Atiira in Uganda.

In this way, as you buy virtual in-game items - everything from shoes, clothes soap and mosquito nets to buildings such as a school - a proportion of the real cash you've spent is put towards the delivery of those physical items.

Completing the loop, when those items arrive in Kapir Atiira, the charity behind the app - New Charity Era - will take a photo of them in situ to show you.

And, in keeping with the holistic nature of the game, all supplies will be sourced locally, so your cash is also building up the local economy.

It's a neat idea and one that hopefully won't be lost in the App Store's Christmas rush.

Raise The Village is free and available now in universal app form for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

You get an idea how it works in the following video, or check out the website for more details.

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Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.