Educational Role-play in Córdoba


Córdoba maintains less than 3% of native dense forests, yet the current provincial government is pushing for a bill that reduces the current protected surface of native forests from 4 million hectares to only 2 million hectares. To address this important issue, the RLC Campus Córdoba organised an educational role-play on May 31, 2017, at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina. Organized by Right Livelihood Award Laureate Raúl Montenegro and three Chairs of the Faculty of Psychology, more than 2,300 university students recreated a debated about the governmental plans for adopting the “bad project of law on native forests”. The role-play involved six main steps: 1) a preparatory process with active dissemination of information prior to and on the 31st May, 2) sector discussions in groups; 3) a public hearing of the groups and a discussion among panel members 4) a vote by all students participating; 5) a presentation of the winning decision, and 6) a music festival as an epilogue. For step number 2 and 3, six main groups of 200-300 students each were formed with randomly selected members. The six groups represented the “government”, “soya agriculturalists” and “parliamentarians of the political party in power” as well as the “university”, “NGOs” and the “movement of green farmers”. At the end of the role-play around 90% of the students voted against the new law.