Wanji Games
MLC VOYAGER | Created by Peripheral Vision International
The Wanji Games platform uses toll-free basic telephone services to provide interactive narratives through spoken audio. This allows a geographically remote audience with limited literacy access to engaging entertainment-education in their own spoken language.
3,036,616 Lives Impacted
For marginalized populations, a little information can change lives in a big way. This solution uses basic telephone services to provide interactive, educational learning through spoken audio. Users are able to call a toll-free number and listen to and interact with educational stories in their primary language. This allows a geographically remote audience with limited literacy access to salient information in their own spoken language through appropriate technology.
Wanji can reach anyone with access to basic mobile devices in the 19+ countries where the service is offered, overcoming barriers of literacy, language, distance, and scale. This game platform is placed directly in the hands of each player through a simple mobile phone. It generates deep analytics about what paths players choose, so learning can be measured and future games can be more effective.
This tool piggybacks on appropriate technology (basic mobile delivered through voice interactive response) that is already in the hands of our target users. It has already reached millions of users quickly and efficiently on a range of topics related to COVID, livelihoods, health and human rights.
The Innovation
All across the global south, basic cellphones are ubiquitous. Wanji turns a basic phone into a teaching tool. The concept is simple: People can call a toll-free number and encounter a spoken “choose-your-own-adventure” style interactive narrative in their local language (“Interactive Voice Response” is the technology involved). They manoeuvre through the story using the buttons on their basic cell phone. The platform combines the aural accessibility of radio, the ubiquity of the basic telephone, and the entertaining and educational potential of interactive narrative in a way that is nationally scalable with minimal cost.
Our technical partner Viamo makes deals with mobile network operators to provide free airtime for social good projects. This costs little and provides telecommunication companies with a value-added feature that helps them compete. Wanji won a Solve award from MIT and has since scaled to 19 countries and reached over 3 million callers to supplement campaigns on topics ranging from family planning to climate change-resistant agriculture to COVID-19 prevention.
About Peripheral Vision International
Peripheral Vision International (PVI) is an international nonprofit that uses media, technology, and popular culture to catalyze social change around the world, with a special focus on last mile communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the world’s largest youth population lives. PVI is a leader in the field of entertainment-education and its founder is co-editor of the recently published collection, “Entertainment-Education Behind the Scenes: Case Studies for Theory and Practice.” Together with partners, PVI has designed award winning television programs, videos, audio games and comics that have been viewed, read, interacted with, or listened to hundreds of millions of times across dozens of countries.
Implemented in
Peripheral Vision International’s innovation has been implemented in 19 countries across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
