Black-led · Edmonton-based · Community-rooted

Gaming can be a doorway to growth, connection and purpose.

Raising AVIGALO™ works with gaming-immersed youth, families and communities to translate digital strengths into identity, connection, purpose and practical next steps.

Explore the Edmonton pilot Partner with us
Raising AVIGALO heart logo combining a game controller and white roses
Community-rooted Built from lived and professional experience
Evidence-informed Grounded in research without overclaiming it
Strengths-based Potential before pathology
Practical Insights translated into usable tools
Watch the introduction

See the bridge between gaming and life.

A short introduction to the strengths, experiences and possibilities at the heart of Raising AVIGALO™.

Select play to watch the one-minute introduction.

Why Raising AVIGALO

Look beyond screen time. See the whole person.

Gaming immersion exists on a spectrum. For some youth, gaming is recreation. For others, it becomes a primary place of competence, belonging, escape or identity, especially when life beyond the screen feels harder to navigate.

Raising AVIGALO begins with curiosity, context and strengths. We ask: What abilities are already present? What needs are being met online? What barriers exist offline? How can families and communities build stronger bridges between gaming and everyday life?

Our focus: translating gaming-developed strengths into identity, connection, purpose and practical next steps.
Proposed 2027 Edmonton pilot

Raising AVIGALO™: From Gaming to Voice, Belonging and Opportunity

Raising AVIGALO™ is developing a Black-led, Edmonton-based pilot with capacity for up to 20 Black youth and young adults ages 18–30 who are immersed in, or strongly connected to, gaming culture. The project will intentionally recruit within Edmonton and will include neurodivergent participants. Five participants will form a paid Youth Advisory Circle that helps shape the program’s activities, accessibility and final digital guide.

Youth voice and belonging

  • A five-member paid Youth Advisory Circle
  • Eight accessible, trauma-informed storytelling and self-discovery workshops
  • Black mentors and guest facilitators

Strengths and self-advocacy

  • Activities addressing anti-Black stereotypes and ableism
  • Space to identify strengths, belonging and personal goals
  • Support for voice and self-advocacy without requiring diagnostic disclosure

Opportunity and shared learning

  • Education, employment, mentorship and community-participation planning
  • A participant-created digital guide
  • Proportionate program evaluation based on feedback and practical learning

Gaming is the engagement context, not the problem the project seeks to solve. The pilot challenges racialized deficit narratives and ableist assumptions that can cause gaming-immersed Black young people to be misread as lazy, disengaged or lacking potential.

Proposed program. Final scope and delivery are subject to funding.
Who we serve

Different people. One shared bridge.

Raising AVIGALO creates practical ways for young people and the people around them to understand gaming immersion, reduce disconnection and build forward movement.

Youth

Gaming-immersed youth

Young people whose skills, belonging or identity are strongly connected to gaming, and who want a future that makes room for those strengths.

Family

Parents & caregivers

Families seeking clearer language, less conflict and realistic ways to support growth without dismissing the world their young person values.

Guides

Educators & youth-serving professionals

People looking for strengths-based tools that connect digital capacities with learning, wellbeing, participation and work.

Partners

Community & program partners

Organizations and collaborators ready to listen, learn and build responsible pathways alongside youth and families.

The Grey Zone

Capable in one world. Still finding a bridge into the next.

The Grey Zone describes the space where a young person may show persistence, strategy, leadership or creativity in digital worlds while feeling stalled, uncertain or under-supported in education, work, relationships or independent living.

We sometimes call this young person a Child of the Grey: not because they are broken or without direction, but because their strengths are visible before a clear pathway for using them has been built.

See how we translate strengths into action →
From pixel to purpose

A name born in a family and refined into a public mission.

Raising AVIGALO began with a mother trying to understand, advocate for and walk alongside a video-game-loving young person. What started as affectionate family language grew into a wider question: how can gaming interests become bridges to confidence, contribution and a meaningful life beyond the screen?

The founder's broader manuscript concept, Raising Hope, Raising AVIGALO, belongs within her story and legacy work. For this initiative, we draw from its strongest thread: love must become learning, and learning must become practical action.

Building stronger bridges between gaming, learning and everyday life.

Rooted in the founder's lived experience and professional practice
Aspiration

Making room for a future larger than the present difficulty.

Value

Recognizing the young person's inherent worth before measuring performance.

Integrity

Meeting families with honest language, transparent limits and responsible practice.

Growth

Treating development as a process of learning, unlearning and becoming.

Action

Turning reflection into realistic next steps that can be practiced and measured.

Love

Keeping relationship, dignity and connection at the centre of change.

Opportunity

Creating pathways into learning, work, leadership and community participation.

What we do

From insight to practical action.

01

Listen & Learn

Gather community insight through conversations, workshops, reflection tools and carefully designed program feedback.

02

Translate Strengths

Help youth recognize gaming-developed capacities such as persistence, strategic thinking, collaboration, creativity and systems awareness.

03

Support Families

Create compassionate conversation guides, workshops and practical tools that reduce conflict and caregiver burnout.

04

Build Pathways

Connect digital interests to learning, work, leadership, community participation and meaningful adulthood.

05

Equip Communities

Offer training and resources for educators, youth workers, health professionals, faith communities and nonprofit teams.

06

Share Learning

Turn lessons from practice into accessible briefs, pilot summaries, tools and knowledge-mobilization resources.

Our approach

Curious before corrective.

Our method combines trauma-aware practice, cultural responsiveness, family partnership and a deliberate focus on strengths. We listen for what gaming is doing in a young person’s life, identify the capacities already present and build practical next steps with the youth and family, not merely for them.

1

Assess

Understand the person, family, gaming context, strengths, pressures and goals.

2

Simplify

Identify the few barriers and opportunities that matter most right now.

3

Optimize

Build realistic, measurable next steps with the youth and their support network.

Evidence & learning

Lead with what is real. Build what comes next.

Raising AVIGALO brings professional knowledge, lived experience, community learning and practical evaluation together to create tools that can be used, tested and strengthened.

Existing foundation

Professional and lived expertise

  • More than two decades of nursing experience
  • More than 15 years of nursing education experience
  • Experience in pediatrics, families and communication
  • Degrees in Fine Arts, nursing and education: MFA, BScN and BEd
  • Long-term lived caregiving and family experience
  • International volunteer and community-capacity-building experience with CDF Canada as a volunteer Business Advisor in Malawi and a MELR Advisor in Kenya
Existing activity

Community development work

  • Workshop facilitation and presentation experience, including Arise and Lead workshops, leadership workshops for marginalized Black youth, and culturally based storytelling workshops
  • Co-leadership of a 2023 anti-racism research project with Dr. Rogers Mokua for the Association of Kenyans in Alberta, engaging 38 Black Edmonton youth and young adults ages 18–25 through surveys, interviews and focus groups
  • Preparation of the project’s executive summary, findings synthesis and related literature review
  • Development of facilitation guides, planning tools, monitoring trackers, reflection tools and reporting resources for community-based learning and evaluation
  • Guided journals, reflection tools and conversation resources
  • Active membership in the emerging CanAfric Heritage Association
  • Youth and family-facing frameworks for strengths translation, reflection and practical planning
Knowledge mobilization

Community Insight Brief

A concise brief describing the issue, what families are reporting, what evidence suggests and where further inquiry is needed.

What this brief explores

The brief brings four forms of knowledge into one accessible place:

  • the practical questions families and youth are carrying;
  • patterns heard through community conversations and engagement;
  • relevant evidence about gaming, belonging, executive functioning and pathways into adult life; and
  • implications for tools, partnerships and further inquiry.

Its purpose is to turn a complex concern into language that families, practitioners, community organizations and funders can use together.

Listen to the brief 4 minutes 13 seconds
Learning in action

Pilot & Learning Plan

A tailored framework for responsible community engagement, participant learning, reflection and practical next steps.

What this pilot will examine
  • the purpose, audience and setting of the engagement;
  • the activities, tools and resources used;
  • participant feedback and observed points of connection;
  • what worked, what needs refinement and what was learned; and
  • practical recommendations for the next workshop, resource or partnership.

After the first engagement, this plan will become a Pilot & Learning Summary grounded in actual participation and feedback.

Listen to the plan 3 minutes 5 seconds
Discuss a pilot or partnership →
Knowledge mobilization

Community Insight Brief

Gaming-Immersed Youth in the Grey Zone

Raising AVIGALO™ Community-rooted education and development Public working brief

The issue

Some young people show persistence, strategy, creativity, social connection and deep concentration in digital environments while struggling to begin or sustain movement in education, work, relationships, self-care or independent living. Families often describe a painful mismatch: clear ability is present, yet the pathway from intention to action remains difficult to build.

Raising AVIGALO calls this in-between experience the Grey Zone. It is not a diagnosis. It is a practical description of a situation that families, educators and youth-serving professionals may recognize but do not always have shared language to discuss.

What families are carrying

The recurring concerns that shaped this initiative include:

  • conflict about screen time that overshadows the needs gaming may be meeting;
  • repeated starts and stops in education, employment or skill-building;
  • an intention-action gap in which a young person can agree to a plan but cannot readily initiate or sustain it;
  • caregiver fatigue caused by constant prompting, negotiating, monitoring and rescuing;
  • fear that reducing digital access without building an alternative source of competence or belonging will deepen withdrawal; and
  • difficulty finding services when a young person does not fit neatly within existing eligibility thresholds.

Not every gaming-immersed young person shares these experiences. The concern is not gaming itself. The concern is the growing distance between a young person’s visible digital capacities and their access to meaningful participation beyond the screen.

What the digital world may be providing

Games can offer clear goals, immediate feedback, repeatable attempts, visible progress, chosen identity, social connection and a predictable structure for challenge. For a young person who experiences uncertainty, shame, repeated failure or difficulty initiating tasks, these features may create a powerful sense of safety and competence.

This does not mean every pattern of gaming is beneficial. It means that effective support begins by asking what function gaming serves before deciding what must change.

What the emerging insight suggests

Look for function

Ask what gaming provides: mastery, regulation, connection, predictability, identity or relief.

Name transferable strengths

Translate persistence, systems thinking, teamwork, resource management and creative problem-solving into language used in learning, community and work.

Build bridges, not abrupt voids

Pair any reduction in gaming with meaningful alternatives that preserve dignity, competence and belonging.

Reduce the size of the next step

Use supported, observable actions that make initiation easier and progress visible.

Implications for families and communities

  • Replace moral labels with curiosity about context, capacity and unmet need.
  • Include youth in defining goals and identifying what feels possible now.
  • Support caregivers with language and tools that reduce circular conflict.
  • Create opportunities for digital strengths to be demonstrated in real projects, volunteering, learning and employment exploration.
  • Use community partnerships when the barriers exceed what one family can carry alone.

Questions for further inquiry

  1. Which gaming-developed strengths do young people recognize in themselves?
  2. What prevents those strengths from transferring into offline settings?
  3. Which forms of scaffolding make the first step easier to initiate and repeat?
  4. What helps families remain connected while expectations and boundaries are negotiated?
  5. What roles can schools, health and social services, employers and community organizations play together?

Raising AVIGALO’s response

Raising AVIGALO is developing conversation tools, community workshops, strengths-translation activities, story-based learning and partnership pathways that help youth and families move from conflict and uncertainty toward clearer, workable next steps.

Look beyond screen time. See the whole person. Build the next bridge together.
Learning in action

First Community Pilot & Learning Plan

From insight to a testable, useful community experience

Raising AVIGALO™ A strengths-based framework in a focused context Pre-pilot plan

Purpose

The first pilot will test whether Raising AVIGALO’s strengths-based language and activities help participants understand gaming immersion more clearly, identify capacities that may be hidden behind screen-time conflict and choose one realistic bridge into everyday life.

Who the pilot is for

The initial engagement can be adapted for one primary audience at a time:

  • parents and caregivers;
  • gaming-immersed youth and young adults;
  • educators and youth-serving professionals; or
  • a mixed community group with carefully structured participation.

Proposed format

A facilitated 90 to 120 minute session built around story, reflection, small-group conversation and practical planning.

1 See the whole person

Use the Grey Zone story to move beyond labels and identify context.

2 Map digital strengths

Name capacities practised through gaming and where they may transfer.

3 Identify the bridge

Choose one barrier, one opportunity and one supported next step.

4 Plan for learning

Decide what progress will look like and how feedback will be gathered.

Decision framework

The pilot applies the Tri-Wisdom™ sequence within the specific context of gaming-immersed youth:

  • Assess: see the young person, family context, strengths, pressures and goals;
  • Simplify: identify the barrier or opportunity that matters most now; and
  • Optimize: choose a wise, workable next step that can be supported and reviewed.

The Tula Pause™ supports the tone of the engagement by making room to pause, notice without rushing to judgment and ask a better question before reacting.

Learning questions

  1. Does the Grey Zone language help participants feel seen without becoming a label?
  2. Can participants identify gaming-developed strengths they had not previously named?
  3. Does the strengths-translation activity reduce blame or open a more useful conversation?
  4. Can each participant identify one next step that feels realistic and specific?
  5. What tools or partnerships do participants want next?

What will be documented

  • the audience, purpose and setting;
  • activities completed and resources used;
  • anonymous or consented participant feedback;
  • points of engagement, confusion or resistance;
  • changes recommended for the next delivery; and
  • practical opportunities for partnership or follow-up.

Success signals

The pilot is successful if participants leave with clearer language, at least one recognized strength, one workable next step and a stronger sense that gaming-related conflict can be approached with curiosity and structure.

After the pilot

This plan will be converted into a public Pilot & Learning Summary using only real activities, feedback and lessons from the engagement. The summary will state what occurred, what was learned, what changed and what comes next.

The goal is not to prove a finished model. It is to learn responsibly, improve the tools and build the next bridge with the community.
Learning into action

Listen. Build. Learn. Strengthen.

Raising AVIGALO develops through community insight, practical application and learning that improves each next step.

Community listening

Youth, families and community partners help identify priorities, language and useful forms of support.

Program learning

Feedback and practical outcomes show what is useful, what needs refinement and what should come next.

Partnership development

Educators, practitioners, mentors and community organizations contribute the expertise needed for responsible growth.

Practice commitments

What guides the work.

These commitments shape how Raising AVIGALO programs, tools and partnerships are designed, documented and strengthened.

Community-rooted Built from lived experience, listening and local relationships.
Strengths-focused Recognizes strategy, persistence, creativity and problem-solving.
Family-aware Considers youth needs alongside caregiver realities and connection.
Program learning Uses feedback and evaluation to improve what is offered.
Ethics-conscious Protects dignity, choice, privacy and responsible participation.

Nursing-process-informed practice

Where appropriate, project development draws on a familiar cycle of assessment, priority-setting, planning, implementation, evaluation and refinement.

Assess Identify priorities Plan Implement Evaluate & refine
Stories

Listen for the life around the screen.

Stories reveal what statistics can miss: identity, competence, belonging, conflict, hope and the small turning points that make movement possible.

Story 01
Founder story

The name that began at home

AVIGALO began as affectionate family language for a video-game-loving original. It became a way of seeing the person before the problem. It also opened a question: how could love become learning, action and opportunity?

See the person before measuring the problem.
1 / 2

Story Archive

Explore shared perspectives or contribute a story as a young person, parent, caregiver, educator or professional.

Explore Stories Share Your Story
The story that inspired Raising AVIGALO

The Light Behind the Closed Door

A privacy-honouring retelling: This composite narrative changes or omits identifying details while preserving the experience and insight that inspired Raising AVIGALO.
Listen to this story Original narrated recording · 4 minutes 9 seconds

There was a young person whose world seemed to grow smaller as the years passed. Beyond a closed bedroom door, a screen glowed late into the night. Inside the game, expectations were clear. Effort had visible results. A loss could be survived privately, and another attempt was always available. Outside the game, the rules felt less forgiving.

The person who loved him watched with a mixture of concern, frustration and tenderness. She tried conversations, schedules, opportunities, mentors and courses. Each new possibility arrived carrying hope. Often, he agreed that something should change. He could describe a next step and sometimes seemed ready to take it. Then action stalled. Days passed. The unopened opportunity became another reminder of what had not happened.

From the outside, it could look like refusal. Inside the family, it felt more complicated. Pressure produced retreat. Repeated reminders produced silence. Attempts to rescue him exhausted the people who cared most, yet leaving him alone with the problem did not create movement either.

A different kind of evidence

Still, another story was present. It was quieter and easier to miss.

When someone vulnerable in the household needed steady care, he could be patient, attentive and dependable. When the family needed practical help, he sometimes carried responsibilities with little recognition. In digital worlds, he showed persistence, strategic thinking, memory and an ability to remain focused for long periods. His life was not empty of capacity. The difficulty was translating that capacity into settings where the path was less predictable and failure felt exposed.

The central question slowly changed. Instead of asking only, “How do we get him away from the screen?” the family began asking, “What does the screen provide? What abilities are already visible there? What makes movement beyond it feel unsafe, and what kind of bridge would make a next step possible?”

The Grey Zone

This was the space that later became known as the Grey Zone. It is the space between the categories people understand easily. A young person may not fit neatly within a service threshold, yet may not be moving toward independence in expected ways. They may be capable, caring and perceptive, while struggling profoundly with initiation, uncertainty, transitions or the fear of getting things wrong.

In this space, families are often offered two unhelpful explanations: the young person is simply lazy, or the family has simply failed. Neither explanation sees the whole person. Neither helps build a path forward.

Raising AVIGALO began in the refusal to accept those narrow conclusions. It began with love that was tired but still curious. It grew from the belief that gaming immersion can be both refuge and information. It can tell us where a young person feels competent, what kind of feedback they can tolerate, how they approach challenge and which strengths have not yet found a language outside the game.

From one family’s question to a shared movement

The story did not end with a dramatic transformation. There was no single intervention that solved everything. Progress appeared in smaller forms: a responsibility carried, a skill recognized, a conversation that lasted longer than before, or a moment when fear was understood as fear rather than defiance.

Those small recognitions became the beginning of a public question. How many other young people live in this in-between space? How many families are trying to choose between pushing harder and giving up? What could become possible if communities helped translate digital strengths into learning, contribution, work, relationship and purpose?

Raising AVIGALO grew from that question. Its work begins where the original story changed: with the decision to look beyond screen time and see the whole person.

Love does not require conventional milestones to be real. Growth begins when hidden capacity is finally seen.
Janepher Otieno, founder of Raising AVIGALO Janepher Otieno, Founder
Black-led and Edmonton-based

Experience that crosses care, education and story.

Raising AVIGALO was founded and is led by Janepher Otieno, an Edmonton-based Black author, educator, registered nurse, caregiver and mother. She holds an MFA, BScN and BEd, and her professional and lived experience spans family care, disability care, migration, education, communication, youth development and international community-capacity-building.

Her international service includes work with CDF Canada as a volunteer Business Advisor in Malawi and as a Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Reporting (MELR) Advisor in Kenya. During both assignments, she worked with some of the most marginalized populations, completed needs assessments, facilitated cooperative-development workshops and conducted follow-up visits.

Read CDF Canada’s published volunteer story →

She has facilitated Arise and Lead Youth workshops, leadership workshops for marginalized Black youth, and culturally based storytelling workshops. She also co-led a 2023 anti-racism research project with Dr. Rogers Mokua for the Association of Kenyans in Alberta and prepared the project’s executive summary, findings synthesis and related literature review.

She is also an active member of the emerging CanAfric Heritage Association, an Edmonton-based organization dedicated to celebrating, preserving and promoting African and African-Canadian heritage and culture in Alberta.

The Raising AVIGALO initiative grows through collaboration, with youth and families at the centre. Educators, mentors, community organizations and funders contribute the expertise required for responsible growth.

Volunteer project team

The team and volunteers behind the initiative.

Raising AVIGALO is founder-led and supported by Black youth and young-adult volunteers whose current contributions strengthen outreach, coordination, events and administration. These are volunteer project roles, not a formal board or paid staff structure.

Founding youth contributor

Name withheld for privacy

Illustrator and lived-experience contributor whose journey from gaming immersion into paid creative work helped spark Raising AVIGALO.

Outreach & project support

Volunteer team member

Supports community outreach and practical project coordination.

Project secretary

Volunteer team member

Provides volunteer secretarial and organizational support.

Events & bookkeeping

Volunteer team member

Supports event organization and project bookkeeping.

Work with us

Help build better bridges between gaming and life.

We welcome conversations with youth organizations, schools, post-secondary institutions, health and social-service teams, community funders, families, mentors and program partners.

Raising AVIGALO receives and coordinates inquiries about programs, partnerships and community participation.

Partnerships Programs, mentorship, community initiatives and funding Families & professionals Resources, workshops and speaking inquiries Share a story Youth, parent, caregiver or professional perspectives
Contact Raising AVIGALO See who we serve Explore The Bloom Umbrella ↗

hello@raisingavigalo.org

Connected by purpose

A focused initiative within The Bloom Umbrella ecosystem.

Raising AVIGALO applies The Bloom Umbrella’s shared decision-centred framework to the specific context of gaming-immersed youth, families and communities.

The Tula Pause™ creates room to notice, listen and ask a better question before reacting.

Visit The Bloom Umbrella™ ↗
1

Assess

See the whole person, their context, capacities and goals.

2

Simplify

Choose the barrier or opportunity that matters most now.

3

Optimize

Build one wise, workable next step and learn from it.

Scope, Ethics & Safeguards

Clear boundaries support responsible work.

Raising AVIGALO is a community-rooted education and development initiative. It is not a diagnostic, clinical, mental-health or crisis service.

The proposed Edmonton pilot is community programming with proportionate program evaluation. It is not academic research. Any future formal research would be undertaken only with appropriately qualified partners and the consent, privacy protections and ethics review required for the people and information involved.

For the proposed 2027 Edmonton pilot, Raising AVIGALO will lead project design, community engagement and program delivery. FOCAS Canada is expected to serve as fiscal agent, subject to funding approval and completion of the required agreement.

The founder’s nursing background informs a careful, person-centred approach to assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation without extending the initiative beyond its stated scope.

Start a conversation

Contact Raising AVIGALO

Send a brief message without leaving this website. We will reply from hello@raisingavigalo.org.

Or email hello@raisingavigalo.org