USAID saves Carana!

Today (thanks to Matheu Schwenk) I had an opportunity to run a  demonstration game of AFTERSHOCK: A Humanitarian Crisis Game with some staff from USAID’s Office for US Foreign Disaster Assistance. Yet again, of course, the poor country of Carana was struck by another devastating earthquake—something which seems to happen with alarming regularity. However, OFDA’s experienced […]

Report from Caranas #39, 40 and 41

Just returning from another delivery of Carana in Nairobi – our 13th delivery of the core course and 14th class of Caranas (or our 39th, 40th and 41st parallel universe Caranas). We had a very good group of students, the whole range of expertise and seniority in the Bank, from junior staff on their first […]

Earthquake strikes Carana!

According to the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), a major earthquake struck near the country of Carana last month… …causing extensive damage to coastal cities, especially the capital Galasi. The incident further exacerbates an already existing humanitarian emergency situation where up to 12,000 refugees are struggling after nearly 20 years of internal strife, tribal conflict […]

Postcard from Carana

This past week I’ve been in Nairobi taking part in the World Bank’s core course on fragility and conflict, and observing their Carana training simulation in action. Originally borrowed from the United Nations and then modified for World Bank purposes, this Carana is designed to explore the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction and continued fragility. It […]

Carana and peacekeeping training

The Daily Nation (Kenya) recent featured a story on peacekeeping training in Africa, using the Carana simulation developed by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre: 26 African countries have trained troops on peacekeeping 13 October 13 2010 at 20:43The Tactical Operations Staff Course, taught over the past three weeks at the Humanitarian Peace Support School in Embakasi, […]

reflections on Carana

Aimé Saba, who recently participated in the Carana simulation as part of a World Bank/AUSAID course on fragility, sent us on the following reflections on the course and the simulation. ———- The World Bank’s course on Fragility and Conflict designed for officials in donor organisations was extremely useful. The use of the fictional country called […]

Carana DDR simulation, Norwegian edition

Gary has discussed several times on PaxSims the Carana simulation used at the World Bank for staff training regarding fragile and conflicted -affected countries, and we’ve also noted the AU’s use of the (UN-originated) Carana setting. Adding to our collection of Caranas, we’ve come across another. The Norwegian military is using a version of Carana […]

AMANI AFRICA – EURORECAMP does Carana

The African Union is currently developing the architecture and capacities necessary to field a military and civilian African Stand-by Force (ASF) by 2010 as a multilateral civilian and military crisis management tool for the continent. the AU has given the name “AMANI AFRICA” to this first ASF training cycle, and to its final exercise. As […]

Carana in Tunis 2

Three new universes were spun off of Carana this week in Tunis for our regional training course.  Once the participants were assigned and prepared for their roles, they got into the simulation quite quickly.   I was really happily surprised by how well the simulation was received – we had essentially no resistance to using the simulation […]

Carana in Tunis 1

Should you worry when you are assigning a participant to a role and he loudly proclaims, “Yes!” – snapping up the binder and quickly flipping through the background docs? Normally, you’d think that kind of enthusiasm would be good, the kind of participation you’d want to encourage in a course.  You do have to worry a bit, though, […]

Carana

A brief introduction to Carana

Virtual AFTERSHOCK on TTS

Thanks to Nicholas Gray, AFTERSHOCK: A Humanitarian Crisis Game can now be played virtually using Table-Top Simulator‚ which means you and your fellow players can assist the earthquake-affected people of Carana without leaving your home or violating social distance protocols. In the article below, Nicholas introduces TTS and the basic game controls. We are extremely […]

AFTERSHOCK in Ottawa

Earlier this month I ran a game of AFTERSHOCK: A Humanitarian Crisis Game for a dozen students at Sir Robert Borden High School in Nepean (Ottawa). As usual, no one was given the rules in advance. Instead, after a short fifteen minute powerpoint presentation on the game (available here), a devastating earthquake hit the developing […]

Wargaming and analysis: reflections on the 13th annual NATO OR&A conference

On Wednesday, War on the Rocks published a piece by Jon Compton on the obstacles on the road to better analytical wargaming. As Jon tends to be, he was blunt in his assessment: As an advocate for, and practitioner of, analytical wargaming within the [US] Department of Defense, I’ve witnessed some good things emerge over […]

Connections UK 2019 report

This year’s Connections UK professional wargaming conference was held at King’s College London on 3-5 September. Participants from almost two dozen countries countries took part, making it one of the most international Connections conferences ever. Of the 285 who registered for the event, about 13% were women. A very large proportion were also younger and […]