Since our early childhood, playing is an activity that accompanies us and leads us in getting to understand the world around us. Through games, children can develop their motor skills and they learn to recognize different shapes, colours and sounds; playing games together, they develop their imagination and creativity, along with their ability to solve problems, resolve conflicts and successfully engage with one another. In the animal kingdom as in our human society, “the little ones” learn first and foremost by the act of playing, because playing it’s an activity that allows us to get all those skills and competencies that we’ll need in order to be ready to face adulthood, all the while having fun and without fears of consequences. At the same time, it’s been observed how using games as educational tools can be very effective with youngsters and adults as well. Gamification is extremely well spread, nowadays (think of the many language learning apps available) and game designers have been experimenting different mechanics in videogames in order to deal with complex issues (for instance, “This war of mine” explores the consequences of war through the eyes of a civilian), but tabletop games are maybe the best example of the exceptional increase of the value of games in our culture: in the last 20 years, published tabletop games have more than quadrupled in numbers, and in Italy alone dozens of game clubs and gaming associations are constantly being born. In a society such as ours, so divided, isolating, and frenzied, where people spend more time in front of screens (of computers and smartphones alike) than in front of other people, where qualities such as empathy, tolerance or curiosity for different cultures are getting scarce, getting around a table to play a game together can become a precious opportunity for connecting with people, sharing experiences and socializing. For their main feature of being fun, moreover, games can be especially useful in gathering young people, and in spurring them to find moments of social interaction and exchange, intercultural too, which can help them grow, learn and get closer to the problems of their community and society, encouraging them to take action and become active citizens, as well as supporting their openness towards the outside world. Playing together can help with the inclusion of people with fewer opportunities (migrants, minorities, etc.), but it can also be a tool for fighting prejudice and stereotypes, for developing critical thinking and raise awareness about many issues, especially when talking about educational games created with that precise goal in mind. Our goals for this project are: - to fight prejudice and stereotypes, and to cultivate tolerance, empathy, critical thinking, social awareness and respect in young people; - to promote social inclusion and the importance of meeting and talking “around a table”, in order to encourage active citizenship among young people; - to promote and retrieve ancient traditions related to games and playing, that are dying out especially in urban settings, through the creation of informative sheets that can be shared with the public, to get to know different cultures also through the games that make them unique; - to help young people develop healthy habits related to fun and free time, in order to encourage socialization and the creation of social connections, and to fight the isolation and alienation that, especially in smaller communities, can be brought about by an overactive digital life and an absence of live meeting opportunities; - to develop capabilities such as creativity, problem solving, conflict resolution, the ability to compromise, along with mathematical and linguistic skills, that are all enhanced by games and can have positive impact on the daily school and/or working life of the young people involved; - to raise awareness among young people and youth workers about gambling addiction and gaming addiction, and promote instead the benefits of tabletop and social games as a precious tool for learning as well as for social inclusion of minorities and youngsters with fewer opportunities; - to explore the potential that tabletop games, specifically, and playful activities typically used in non formal education have, in order to understand how effective fun can be for learning, to get to know different learning styles and discover methodologies that are commonly not used in academic environments; - to develop new educational games (preferably tabletop) aimed at dealing with relevant social issues, which can support the partner organisations in raising awareness and training the young people they work with in their local communities.