We are Instituto PoN, a new non-profit civil society organization based in Brazil, founded in 2025.
What do we do?
We promote game-based Digital Environmental Education and develop related tools, methods, and activities.
With the PoN! Armadillo Island mobile game and the planned new developments, we aim at making complex socio-environmental issues graspable, constructive, and engaging for children and young teens. By doing so in the digital realm, we strengthen critical thinking, tech literacy, and media literacy from a socio-environmental perspective - while bridging formal and informal learning contexts in a powerful way. This is Instituto PoN's mission.
We combine game-based learning, digital culture, and intercultural collaboration to empower 11–15-year-olds in Brazil, Colombia and Europe to understand and respond to the climate, environmental, and biodiversity crises.
Our award-winning mobile action game PoN! Armadillo Island was developed jointly by Brazilian and European partners (see list below). It is available for free for iOS and Android in English, Portuguese, Spanish and German, and has reached thousands of children and young people across Brazil and Colombia since the launch in 2022. The game is accompanied by a free educator toolkit, available in Spanish and Portuguese on the Educators page here on the PoN website.
What is Environmental Education?
Most Latin American countries have national laws, strategies, and programs integrating Environmental Education across all educational levels, focusing on climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability within national frameworks. This is often implemented at state and municipal levels. Countries like Brazil, Colombia, Equador and México have strong Environmental Education policies for formal as well as informal learning contexts.
Why Digital Environmental Education?
All over the world, communities are witnessing how the digital sphere shapes the identities and opinions of children and young people. The PoN Initiative brings the climate conversation into the most favored cultural language of this generation: Digital games.
Books, lectures, theatre, and nature-based education are essential, and we need more of all of them, but time is short, and societies urgently need effective materials, methods, and strategies to bring environmental education into the digital sphere.
Looking back
As a part of Danish Cultural Institute (until january 2026), we have facilitated more than 120 workshops for educators, students, and diverse groups, stimulating reflection and dialogue. Our experience over the past five years is a big confirmation of what research tells us: building climate engagement among children and youth must be attractive, constructive, and fun.
Looking ahead
Join us in constructing a large-scale game-based environmental education campaignthat fully integrates the digital dimension, connects it to the physical world through educational kits, teacher training, and activity programs, and strengthens critical thinking, tech literacy, and media literacy from a Latin-American socio-environmental perspective.
Contact
- Anders Hentze, CEO — anders@institutopon.org
- Nana Janus, Country Manager, Brazil — nana@institutopon.org
