The triple partnership of UNCTAD TrainForTrade, APEC-Antwerp/Flanders Port Training Center, and IAPH has taken the Port Endeavor UN SDG game to the next level. The serious game, which has been co-developed to encourage global ports and their communities to integrate the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals into their businesses, is now fully digitized.

The Port Endeavor upgrade allows both live and remote moderation for games of up to six ports with seven people playing in person per team with a given role. Players as well as moderators can use their smartphones and tablets to interact, meaning that all that is required is a space for players, wi-fi, a laptop projecting the map with team scores, and a set of role cards for each team.

“Our game has already been played by over 1,000 port professionals from all five continents, and we would now like to take the game beyond the ports themselves to the communities they serve” commented UNCTAD TrainForTrade Chief Mark Assaf. “Digitizing the game allows moderators to operate more freely and to focus on the choice of solutions the teams must select based on World Ports Sustainability projects to become the most sustainable port with the largest number and widest variety of UN SDGs won.”

By automating the scoring, visualizing the UN SDGs collected online per team using the famous seventeen icons and even allowing for a digital dice throw to try and avoid real life incidents after round three, players can enjoy the game at a conference or on the sidelines of a corporate meeting with the support of moderators equipped with tablets or iPads.

Every year, the UN Secretary-General honors and recognizes significant performance of UN Secretariat personnel who go above and beyond the call of duty in the discharge of their duties or initiate and implement projects with great impact and innovative potential with the UN Secretary-General Awards.

The UNCTAD TrainForTrade team has been nominated as finalists in the category “UN 2.0 - Quintet of Change”. The award to given to the team which “cultivates an organisational culture that thrives on agility, creativity, learning, adaptability, innovation, data, digital and strategic foresight, and champions diversity, inclusion, and youth empowerment.”

APEC and Port of Antwerp-Bruges International Managing Director Kristof Waterschoot commented: “The co-creation of this game, which began back in 2019 when our port’s sustainability team teamed up with our IAPH colleagues and a professional serious game creator, has now reached a new digitized level which will allow us as partners to bring sustainability best practices to all kinds of ports and their communities.”

IAPH Managing Director Patrick Verhoeven concluded : “Ultimately this game was conceived during a brainstorm between our port members, academia, shipowners and UNCTAD itself in its Geneva headquarters back in March 2019 when we all decided to find a novel way of bringing the World Ports Sustainability Program best practices to life. To see it now being recognised by the office of the UN Secretary General five years later is testament to the teamwork between ourselves and our two partners. Port Endeavor offers an enjoyable way to inform and educate professionals on how ports work with the Sustainable Development Goals. We wish UNCTAD TrainforTrade the best of luck for the Award.”