Introducing Heliotrope

Introducing Heliotrope

Chris Lowry introduced us to Heliotrope’s founder, Howard Esbin, two years ago. From the start, we were struck by the tremendous potential of a group learning game Howard was piloting with community agencies and schools.  Prelude helps fosters self-knowledge, creative thinking, and collaborative skills, Players express what they learn individually, in teams, and as a group in a highly engaging process. Artefacts produced during the game also become invaluable additions for life-career portfolios.

Prelude is an ideal way to start a school year or training program. It ‘tunes’ the entire group positively.  This has proven especially beneficial in addressing the serious self-esteem challenges experienced by youth at risk, new immigrants, and laid-off workers. Diverse groups, with a wide range of learning styles and abilities, have all played the game successfully across Canada.

Why Prelude Matters

Schools, businesses, and governments recognize the value of well-rounded students, employees, and citizens. ‘Soft Skills’, like empathy, resourcefulness, and cooperation, are increasingly seen as important as ‘Hard Skills, like writing and mathematics. However, there’s a crucial gap in the development of these softer skills. This starts in primary school and continues into adulthood. Consequently, across most sectors, demand is growing for social development tools that can help address this gap. Prelude does so effectively and efficiently.

Enterprise Goal
The goal is to make Prelude widely available, easily accessible, and highly affordable as an online ‘out-of-the-box’ digital tool for professionals - educators, counsellors, trainers, and facilitators. This means it can be scaled quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively. Revenues will be generated through the sale of multi user annual site licenses.

The Eastern Township School Board in Quebec is purchasing Prelude’s first annual license. The deciding factor is Prelude’s tangible impact on self-esteem and cooperation. This fall, over a thousand students will play the game. Moreover, the ETSB is interested in collaboration with other jurisdictions in making it widely and easily available.
 
Here’s what one youth at risk facilitator said about her group’s experience.
 
“ This is a wonderful activity. The overall concept of Prelude is unique and serves a great purpose in the educational and/or employment field. It gave the participants a boost of self-confidence, it helped with their team building and most importantly, it provided them with an "Ah Ha" moment vis-à-vis the artwork they created. The “I, We, and All” transition was spectacular! It made complete sense once everything was up on the wall. The combination of the verbal and visual stimulus made the personalities come to life and even for us as facilitators. It was very enjoyable! The computer-generated test for the colors was also very user friendly.”
 
The CSI is so pleased and proud to be supporting Heliotrope’s development. We are also delighted at the opportunity to work with our colleagues at MaRS and Aperio to support this project. For more information, please visit www.heliotrope.ca