The Haenyeo of Jeju Island, South Korea (SK), are a community of women free divers who have practised sustainable fishing for centuries. They represent a unique cultural heritage, environmental stewardship, and women's empowerment. However, climate change and social shifts threaten their way of life. In this project I work with a Haenyeo group in Jeju island and the leading South Korean research institute KAIST, to co-design a serious game as a critical platform to preserve and promote this valuable heritage, highlight women's contributions to fisheries, and inspire individual action on climate change. The community’s and experts’ involvement in the design will ensure its relevance and impact.

The game will be designed as a critical platform for the Haenyeo’s knowledge and heritage to be raised up and celebrated, enlighten players about sustainable traditional practices, community building, and women

empowerment, and inspire behavioural change. Employing the core elements of exploration and fun, serious games enable rich active learning processes which create new knowledge, enable reflective thinking, action, and decision making, and are powerful tools for stimulating behavioural change. The proposed game aims to:

• Preserve the Haenyeo heritage: The game will document and celebrate the Haenyeo's unique fishing practices, cultural traditions, and oral histories.

• Highlight women's contributions to fisheries with global impact: The game will showcase the Haenyeo's role as successful women fishers, promoting women’s contributions to fishing families, communities and industries globally, campaigned by groups such as the UKRI-funded Women in Fisheries UK, Indonesia's Women Fishers Solidarity and Chile’s National Corporation of Artisanal Fishing Women.

• Help the community address social shifts: By involving the Haenyeo community in the game's design, the project will facilitate intergenerational knowledge transfer and empower them to adapt to changing social dynamics.

• Inspire individual action on climate change: Through interactive gameplay, the game will weave indigenous knowledge into personal understandings of climate change on marine environments encouraging sustainable practices at an individual level.

:: Pictures from Haenyeo changing room, Yongrak-ri, Jeju and from workshop activities at Sinye-ri village, Jeju island. ::