Community bingo
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. ―George Bernard Shaw
👥 Serves: 11-25 people, 2-10 people
🎚 Difficulty: Easy
⏳ Total time: Ongoing
🥣 Ingredients: A shared online communication platform, a group of people
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Community, Liberatory Learning, Positive Emotion
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Abundance, Celebration, Challenging, Community-building, Creativity, Curiosity, Fun, Play, Reciprocity
Community bingo
📝 Description
A series of online challenges and activities to engage your participants.
With many in-person events and gatherings transferred to the online space, facilitators are struggling to find creative ways to engage their participants. The following recipe has been inspired by JourneyGo, an online bingo activity created by a few coaches of the Climate-KIC Journey Summer School, which in 2020 was delivered entirely online. This activity can be played with your team, community, or event participants and it is especially recommended for online gatherings that last more than a few hours and are spread over multiple days. It is a fun and creative way to activate your participants and invite them to share more about themselves and bond with others. Feel free to personalise the challenges and activities based on your participants and the topic of your online gathering.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Choose a communication platform
Before introducing the community bingo, make sure to select an online communication platform that is most appropriate for your participants (e.g. WhatsApp group, Slack channel, etc.). It is important everyone is on this platform to ensure they can fully participate in the community bingo.
Step 2 – Explain the rules (5’)
Whenever it feels right in your online programme, introduce the community bingo. Explain that there are several challenges and activities to be completed and participants can show they have completed a task by sharing it in the chosen online communication platform. Whoever is the first to complete all the tasks, is the winner. You might want to set a few rules, e.g. participants can complete tasks only during the breaks and outside the official program times (if you are afraid they will get distracted during the online sessions).
Step 3 – Introduce the challenges (5’)
Present the various challenges and activities and share them in the online communication platform so that participants can always refer back to them. Feel free to personalise the challenges – here are a few for inspiration:
- Show the group something that is typical in your culture.
- Share an example of a XX initiative in your local area (e.g. choose a topic relevant to the content of your online programme).
- Share a XX recipe and cook someone else’s recipe (e.g. vegetarian, vegan, local, etc.).
- Share a picture of your local landscape (with you in it if possible).
- Propose an energiser to facilitate during the online programme.
- Share and explain a social or environmental challenge in your area and how the community is responding to it (if anything).
- Go to a bookstore and leave a post-it note with a positive message in a book you like.
- Take a walk in Nature and enjoy its peacefulness.
- Record yourself singing a traditional song from your culture.
- Do something out of your comfort zone and share your experience with the group.
- Share an activity that relaxes you the most.
- Invite another participant for a 1:1 conversation to get to know them better.
- Share one of your favourite quotes or life mottos.
- Share one of your hidden talents (and show it to the group!).
- Film yourself performing a traditional dance from your culture.
Step 4 – Play! (ongoing)
Officially kick off the bingo and enjoy people sharing their accomplishments of tasks in the chosen online communication platform. You might want to think about a small prize or reward for the winner(s) of the community bingo.