Interactive Tool: Choose your escape route

Last year about this time, the BBC created an excellent interactive educational tool to help people experience some of the struggles involved in refugee migration to Europe. If you’ve not played with, I would suggest doing so. You can find it here: Open this on your mobile device and hold a refugee’s phone.

However, yesterday, I ran across another interactive educational tool produced by the BBC that is also worth your time. This one is older than the phone experience but takes the initiative further, actually allowing you to make the decisions that determine the escape route. After a decent amount of research, the BBC was able to determine the likely choices made by most refugees leaving Syria. This interactive website actually puts you into those decision processes and narrates the journey. It is worth 10 minutes of your time to try and see if you can make the tough choices made by these Syrians fleeing tyranny.

Because of its interactive nature, there are literally dozens of outcomes presented to the user. Make the wrong choice, and you may get stranded at sea or robbed of the little money you have.

But don’t think of it as a game.

Instead, approach this experience as an opportunity to gain a little empathy for the millions of people having to make these impossible choices. Imagine having to make them for your family.

Then consider what kind of care Christ would have us offer to those in the midst of this kind of trauma.

Click on the image below to begin your journey: