The Global Trade Game
You’ll need
- Pens or pencils
- Stopwatch or phone
- Printed card sets (country profile, resource, product and event cards)
- Score sheet
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
- Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help.
Planning and setting up the activity
- Create four to six fictional countries with different starting conditions.
- Give each country different combinations of resources, money, technology, workers and infrastructure.
- You can find some examples on this page.
- Prepare resource cards such as water, food, energy, raw materials, technology, skilled workers.
- Create product cards that teams can manufacture by combining resources.
- Prepare event cards that will affect the countries during the game.
- Divide everyone into teams and assign each team a country.
Techland
- Lots of technology
- High income
- Limited raw materials
Riveria
- Plenty of water and food
- Limited industry
Mineralia
- Rich in natural resources
- Limited technology
Islandia
- Strong tourism industry
- Vulnerable to extreme weather
Climate emergency: there’s a drought – all countries lose one water card.
Technology breakthrough: Technology cards are worth double this round.
Global cooperation agreement: Teams earn bonus points for completing trades with two or more countries.
Supply chain disruption: Raw materials cannot be traded during the next round.
Running the activity
- Gather everyone together and explain that each team represents a country in a global economy.
- Give each team their country profile and starting Resource Cards.
- Explain that the aim is to improve the wellbeing of their population by earning Prosperity Points.
- Teams can earn Prosperity Points by trading resources, manufacturing products, and responding to challenges.
- Allow five minutes for teams to review their resources and develop a strategy.
- Start the first trading round. Teams can negotiate deals, exchange resources, and form partnerships.
- At the end of the round, award Prosperity Points to teams that successfully create products or improve living conditions.
- Introduce a global event card. For example:
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- A drought reduces water supplies.
- A new renewable energy technology becomes available.
- A major storm damages infrastructure.
- Demand for certain products increases.
- Teams must adapt their plans and continue trading.
- Run several rounds, introducing new events and challenges as the game progresses.
- At the end of the game, calculate Prosperity Points and announce the results.
- Bring everyone together to discuss what happened during the game.
Reflection
Not every country started with the same opportunities, resources, or challenges. Ask everyone to think about how their starting position affected their decisions. What made some countries more resilient than others? How important was cooperation? What similarities can they see between the game and the real world?
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
You must run your activities in line with the Safeguarding Code of Conduct for Adults (Yellow Card) and report any concerns to the UK HQ Safeguarding Team.
- To make it easier, reduce the number of resources and event cards, and allow teams more time to negotiate.
- To make it harder, introduce secret objectives (e.g. reducing carbon emissions, becoming largest exporter etc), additional global events, or changing market values for resources and products.
Make it accessible
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
