Connie Wang
Joel Baraka and Anson Liow
Joel Baraka, left, and Anson Liow met at UW-Madison and bonded over their love of games.
Joel Baraka was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda; Anson Liow is from Malaysia and after high school volunteered with refugee communities. The two met at UW-Madison and bonded over their shared love of games. They co-created 5 STA-Z, a game that is getting international attention and attracting funding. It’s also helping kids learn in refugee camps.
Joel: In high school I took an entrepreneur leadership class. There they really pushed me to think about my community and where I come from. I had to think about the problems I’ve seen in my community and what I could do about them. I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but we fled to Uganda to escape the civil war. I grew up in Kyangwali refugee camp in Uganda and received a scholarship for high school to attend the African Leadership Academy in South Africa. While taking the entrepreneurship class, I realized that going to school and education was changing my life, yet many children in my community continued to lack access to quality education. I thought maybe I could do something to help other refugee children in my community get a chance at an education.
Anson: Joel and I had this interesting connection where we both had experience working with refugee children and we both love to play games. I’m from Malaysia, and after high school, I volunteered with refugee communities. Teachers in refugee camps have to manage overcrowded classrooms — like 150 students in a classroom. That’s a big part of the social mission of our venture — to help teachers and students by providing learning materials that are fun.
Joel: Looking back at how school had been for me there are things I had not loved. I love socializing and playing all sorts of games with my peers. But while attending class you’re expected to sit down and listen to a teacher. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but as a child, I didn’t enjoy this kind of setup. The entrepreneur leadership class made me ask “What can I do about the education system to make the environment more childlike?” That’s how I came up with my educational game, 5 STA-Z.
Anson: Looking back on my childhood, primary school was fun for me because I was involved in lots of extracurricular activities, but I didn’t really enjoy going to classes because of how rigid the system was. It would have been better if we had games or activities within the classrooms.
Joel: I am daily amazed by Anson’s love for games. To me, he is like this young board game guru. He has this great passion to understand how they work and their different mechanics, which is amazing. When we met here at UW-Madison and were living in the same dorm, we played tons of games — volleyball and soccer during the day and board games in the evenings. There was a board game marathon every evening!
Anson: Remember when we played Jenga? You had never seen it before and you took it back to Uganda!
Joel: Right, that’s how it all started! I was still working on 5 STA-Z as I simultaneously carried out testing pilots, but it was in its starting stages. When Anson came on, he helped make it into a complete product.
Anson: The game is made up of a star-shaped board that can accommodate up to five players. We have tried to make the game as simple as we can. It is basically a question-answer card game based on the education curriculum. Children take turns asking and answering and they get to move on the board if they answer correctly. We have incorporated other game mechanics such as chance and jeopardy to make it less obvious for the smarter children to always win. It’s a simple game, but the beauty of it is it’s child-centered. Now the learning is taking place among the children. When they are asking questions and sharing answers, there’s a lot of discussion going on. There’s learning taking place and it’s also fun.
Joel: Its name, 5 STA-Z, was inspired by a simple idea that any child is meant for the stars; all they need are the tools and resources to simply be. The “5” represents the idea that we wanted each board to accommodate up to five students to allow learning to happen in smaller groups compared to hundreds of children in one single classroom. The “A-Z” represents the idea that we wanted the game to cover the Ugandan education curriculum from beginning to end. When the children play the game, the five players actually take on the names of the five brightest stars in the galaxy (Sirius, Canopus, Rigil, Arcturus and Vega).
Anson: The game obviously is making learning fun but it’s also supplementing the limited resources they have. Textbooks don’t come easy in refugee camps. What we do is we try to find ways to get the money that’s needed to produce these games and we provide them at zero cost.
Joel: One thing I’ve loved about talking to the kids is that kids tell you the truth. They will tell you what is great about the game, but also what is not good about the game, which has been helpful for improvements. They don’t necessarily point out how they are learning, but point out how school is becoming fun for them.
Anson: They might not point out how they are learning, but we are seeing it! In Uganda, after grade seven students take the Primary Learning Exam to determine if they are ready for high school. This year, one of the communities that we’re working with had record-breaking numbers of distinctions among the students for the exam.
Joel: That’s actually the primary school I went to. This primary school has been in the Kyangwali refugee camp for about 60 years, and kids have never scored such high grades in its history. In the refugee camp, there were no computers or the internet to use at home when schools closed due to COVID. We made a GoFundMe and raised about $12,000, so we were able to produce the games and give them to the parents and the kids at home. That’s how they were able to study. It makes us feel like the game made a huge impact.
Anson: So far, we have distributed 5 STA-Z to eight primary schools, reached almost 5,000 students and distributed more than 900 games. We want to do more than just 5 STA-Z, but we’re still students. I’m a first-year master’s student and Joel is a fifth-year undergrad student.
Joel: Of course it can be difficult sometimes but knowing that our work will impact a child’s life in accessing education and hopefully a better future someday, is what really matters to us.
Anson: We can still do the things that we love as long as we are accomplishing everything we want to accomplish with “My Home Stars.” We won a Wisconsin Without Borders grant from the University of Wisconsin in 2020 and the Wisconsin Idea Fellowship this year where we shall be working with a few professors from UW Madison to keep improving our work.
Joel: Yeah, it has really been awesome to see how the Badger community around Wisconsin, and around the world through the UW alumni, has helped us. Our GoFundMe campaign was a huge success, and we really credit all this to the amazing people that have been so supportive. It means a lot every time when we win something because I think about the kids. Anson, I and the rest of the team winning something means that we can continue supporting these children.
This is an edited version of Joel Baraka and Anson Liow’s story, which was produced by Jade Iseri-Ramos as part of Wisconsin Humanities’ storytelling project Love Wisconsin. See their full story and other Love Wisconsin stories at lovewi.com.
