Joel Baraka ’22 realized early the profound difference education can make in a person’s life. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he grew up in Uganda’s Kyangwali Refugee Camp. While there, he experienced firsthand the challenges that come with receiving an education in an underresourced environment. Teachers regularly had more students than they could meaningfully interact with, and classrooms lacked necessary educational supplies, such as textbooks. Baraka noticed that kids were often left to their own devices in class, and he realized that an educational game would be a fun way to engage students.
He tinkered with prototypes, but the idea was put on hold as he worked toward his own education. Baraka finished secondary school in 2014 and earned a scholarship to the African Leadership Academy in South Africa. In 2017, Baraka came to UW–Madison as a King-Morgridge Scholar. That same year, he was personally awarded the Queen’s Young Leader Award by Queen Elizabeth II. The idea for the board game and My Home Stars — a nonprofit to facilitate the game’s development and distribution and to support refugee communities — didn’t come together until 2018 when Baraka met fellow engineering student Anson Liow ’21, MS’22.
Baraka became fast friends with Liow, who had grown up in Malaysia and spent time volunteering with refugee communities there before coming to the UW. The two bonded over their similar experiences, as well as their mutual love for games. Liow’s lifelong interest in understanding how things are built not only made him well-suited for a career in civil engineering but also prepared him to tackle the world of game design. He was the perfect partner to help turn Baraka’s idea into a playable game.
Read more about My Home Stars here:
https://uwalumni.com/news/worth-a-thousand-words-my-home-stars/