By Harold Goldberg

Good news came via Gmail today. I’ll be speaking at the Games for Change Festival in New York City’s New School in late June.

The subject of the talk is “When Journalists Educate With Games: How and Why the New York Videogame Critics Circle Mentors Students and Older Adults.”

What I hope to convey is not simply why we do this kind of outreach and how it came to be.

If you’re an educator or a game developer, I’ll pass on what we’ve learned.

Through games journalism, the New York Videogame Critics Circle gives back to the community by mentoring, designing paid internships and offering scholarships to high school students in the Bronx.

We also mentor older adults with VR. In this session, author and Washington Post and New York Times contributor Harold Goldberg will speak about leading a group of diverse multicultural journalists to teach writing, reviewing and team-building in New York’s schools.

What have we done right? What do we still need to do? How are school educators and self-starting students invaluable to the process? How scale-able is the program for other schools in other cities and states?

I think, after a few years of trial and error, we have a great template from our work at the Bronx’s DreamYard Prep School that can be used in other schools across the country.

So I’ll share that – and some other useful facts as well – including how we work with older adults.

The date will be June 28, 29 or 30th, and I’ll update this space as soon as I know the time slot.

Journalist/author Harold Goldberg is the Founder of the New York Videogame Critics Circle and the New York Game Awards.

I hope to see you there!