Utilising the living labs approach in the design of a digital platform for SINGA

Vulnerable children in Africa fail to access basic social services and people they need to advance in life because they are not empowered enough to do so and have little information to their benefit. This paper describes the development of SINGA which is a virtual world that aims top take up this challenge by enabling the child to develop an inner resilience to cope with situations in the everyday world and to access peer networks and other support systems that will enable them to cope with life's hurdles. This virtual world is created with the participation of the children using the living labs approach. Children interact with the physical world in the form of a SINGA laboratory which emulates the proposed digital environment in order to gauge their opinions and attitudes towards the modelling of a SINGA virtual world. For effective empowerment of children the digital platform should be in the form of an interactive game that offers well-developed challenges to impart lessons that relate to the children's environment. The platform should be accessible via multiple media elements that children are familiar with. The platform should take into account the self-supporting structures that are in place for the child in the absence of adult care in order to understand key life events.