Projects

Lessons Learned Simulations and Training offers both open-access training courses and custom-designed on-demand training modules, with a methodological emphasis on interactive tabletop simulations and activities. Trainings vary in style, content, and duration, and can be designed to fit specific needs.

LLST continues to expand the scope of its training projects and its voice in the fields of simulation-based training and serious games. Below you can find information on all our projects past and present, including reports, courses, training resources, and public appearances.

Alongside implementing partners Save the Children and CRISP Berlin, Lessons Learned Simulations and Training is providing a new workshop initiative that supports the development of community-led humanitarian simulation designs in Jordan throughout December 2020 and into 2021.

This project is funded by the generous support of the Fund for Innovation and Transformation, Global Affairs Canada, and the Inter-Council Network.

UPDATE March 2021:
The workshops are now underway, and applications are currently closed. As this project continues, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, here on our website, or join our mailing list to gain up-to-date news.

UPDATE January 2021:
Applications are currently open for the next phases of this project.  Please click here (English) or here (Arabic) to learn more about how Lessons Learned can assist you and/or your organization to design and deliver your own humanitarian training simulation. This free program will include 5 sessions of online training, mentorship and support on your design from a simulation design expert, and assistance in the delivery and evaluation of your design. The online sessions run in February and March and are offered in both Arabic and English.

UPDATE November 2020:
We are heading into phase one of this exciting multi-phase project! You can learn more and register for our free, participatory training sessions here.

In LLST’s Digital Facilitation Tools Series we are covering a selection of digital tools, each of which can be used to help facilitate online trainings, simulations, and serious games. Every post in this series provides an overview of one product, discuss that product’s strengths and weaknesses, examine its accessibility and ease of use, and describes how we see it fitting into the world of online simulation and training. This series focuses on products that are affordable and easy to access; we plan to showcase a wide variety of tools to help you get started creating your own digital simulations!

The Series:

“Even when multiple stakeholders are working towards the same goal, their approaches and their definitions of success can be wildly different. Can you untangle the web of humanitarian efforts?”
 
Lessons Learned Simulations and Training is working with Terry Pearce of Untold Play to create a new learning game, The Pyramid – A Humanitarian Dice Game. This short-format tabletop game is designed for 3-6 players and will be available in person and online. The Pyramid will provide an entertaining and safe environment where prospective humanitarian workers, undergraduate students, and other interested community members can learn about the diverse goals, motivations, actions, and achievements of various stakeholders in an urban displacement scenario.
 
Check back here to learn more about The Pyramid as the project develops.

LLST founder Matthew Stevens is assisting Carolyn Aubry, an independent designer and expert in strategic sourcing and supply chain optimization, to create a new simulation: Route 726.

This team-building simulation centres around logistics, problem solving, and resource management in the humanitarian sector, and is designed especially for new recruits. Participants will work together to requisition supplies and load them on a small freight plane before it departs toward a community in need. However, each team has its own briefing on which supplies are most necessary, and space in the plane is severely limited. Team members will face difficult decision making as they learn how to compromise and reprioritize before the plane can depart.

We look forward to providing further updates on Route 726 as the project develops.

Missed Connections is a short exercise on utilizing systems thinking in urban humanitarian response scenarios, designed to be completed in 30 minutes or less.

To learn more about Missed Connections, to book a simulation delivery by LLST, or to find out how you can deliver your own session of Missed Connections, contact us at info@LLST.ca.

Created alongside Danika Bouchard and Myriam Labrie-Loiselle of Humanitarian Partners / Partenaires Humanitaires, Humanitarian Perspectives places participants into the roles of several displaced households and humanitarian NGOs and asks each household unit to complete a needs assessment survey with every NGO team. While the refugee crisis depicted in Humanitarian Perspectives is fictional, it draws upon true experiences and word-for-word questions sourced from real needs assessment surveys in order to highlight the common disconnect between these surveys and the needs of the people they’re aiming to assist.

Humanitarian Perspectives is a digital simulation that was built using Discord, a free-to-use program for voice, text, and video communication as well as Google Drive’s Forms, Docs, Sheets, and Slides programs. These tools enable the facilitators to provide an engaging experience that is accessible and free for participants.

To learn more about Humanitarian Perspectives, to book a simulation delivery by LLST, or to find out how you can deliver your own session of Humanitarian Perspectives, contact us at info@LLST.ca.

Lessons Learned Simulations and Training and Imaginetic have teamed up to compose a report entitled “Serious Games: Humanitarian User Research” funded by Save the Children UK. 

You can find the report here.
You can watch a webinar of the findings here.
For more information, read our blog post on the report here.

Created and facilitated by Lessons Learned founder and director Matthew Stevens, ‘The Day My Life Froze’: Urban Refugees in the Humanitarian System is a two-day professional development course structured around an intensive in-class educational simulation. Our flagship project, The Day My Life Froze re-centres the human subjects of humanitarianism in the minds of current and prospective humanitarian workers.

To learn more about the project, or to book your own course, please click here.

Lessons Learned Simulations and Training has provided design support and humanitarian advice to Imaginetic on “Lifelines: the UNHCR Supply Game”, a training game on supply chain management for the UN Refugee Agency.

Founder and director, Matthew Stevens, has been proud to speak on behalf of LLST as a part of numerous seminars, webinars, and podcasts. If you are interested in booking Matthew at a future event, you can contact LLST via email at info@llst.ca. Learn more about Matthew’s appearances below.

Lessons Learned Simulations and Training offers courses designed to prepare prospective and current humanitarian workers to perform modern, critical humanitarian work. We are able to provide custom courses to fit your organisation’s needs, as well as public courses for individuals seeking training and experience in the humanitarian field.

Click here or read below to learn more about LLST courses.

Custom Courses
Our pre-developed simulations and training modules can be adapted to fit into a pre-existing training session scheduled by your team, or an entirely new course or simulation can be custom-built to meet specific learning outcomes or to give your staff a chance to practice their skills.

Public Courses
LLST offers regular open-access deliveries of our humanitarian training course, built around “The Day My Life Froze”, our simulation on urban-based protracted refugee crises from middle-income countries.

Due to COVID-19, we are not currently offering any public courses at this time. Check our News page, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up to date with all our future available courses.

Past Courses
You can find a list of our past course deliveries here.

LLST believes that people can learn all sorts of lessons from play, and that the power of serious games reaches far beyond our humanitarian field. Because of this, the LLST team often facilitates large format recreational games for groups of all kinds. Whether a game is an immersive simulation of historical events, or a lighthearted imagining of an alien invasion, LLST knows that games provide a safe and enjoyable environment to learn, teach, develop social skills, build community, practice team work and critical thinking, and more.

Our past recreational games partners include:

If you would like LLST to facilitate a large format game at your teambuilding event, business retreat, school event, conference, or another event please contact us at info@llst.ca.