The folder area (tab Aid Package) shows the makeup of the current aid package. Selecting the little button left of the aid package's name (such as "No Aid") brings up a dialog where you can select pre-packaged aid or customize your own package.

Within each aid type, there are levels, or Points, allocated to that type. Each point represents an unspecified but vast sum of money. Adding more points to an aid type increases its effect, but suffers from diminishing returns. E.g., doubling the points spent supplying food does not double its positive impact on mortality. Below the folders is a line showing points spent, points remaining in the budget, and death toll since the year 2005. When the budget is exhausted, aid ends.

The game's timespan is set to follow the group of girls born in the 5-year Step 1995-2000. If you select the Run button, the simulation runs to their last half-decade, when they're aged 80-85. You can also use the Step button to proceed a half decade at a time, changing aid along the way as desired, or select Run or Step beyond the girls' lifespan. The Reset button takes you back to where the simulation begins, ready for the step 2005-2010.

What's the Point?

It's probably safe to say that human population growth is the greatest challenge to all life on Earth in the 21^st Century. World hunger, devastating poverty, pollution, destroyed natural resources, species lost forever - all scale up with human population growth.

The human suffering, the children born to hunger and poverty, are just staggering. We want to help, we want to fix it, not only for the environment, but for the people. Yet if we simply feed starving people, we'll fail. We haven't stopped the fuel on the fire of population growth, indeed we exacerbate it. And in the end, population growth will outstrip any ability of others to feed them.

The point of this game is to balance pragmatism and compassion. And to see that saving natural resources and human life are not antagonistic goals, but in many ways, the same goal.

Scenarios

Demographers use "population pyramids" to show how a population is "structured"--how many people are in each age group. Human demographics is generally done with 5-year age groups. Every other line is labelled with an age group, simply because the text would be too small if each group were labelled. We use a top age group of 80-85 due to the original data on which the fictional countries are based. There are two pyramids to compare the effects of your aid package on the population structure. They are automatically sized to keep them at the same scale.

The blue side is males, pink side females. Each side and age group has a bright bar and a dim bar. The dim bar shows the size of the group when the simulation began, the bright bar its size now. The simulator specially tracks the age group born in 1995-2000 and their descendants. This group is shown in magenta, and its descendants yellow.

In the picture above, the "With Aid" pyramid shows a decreasing population, with fewer people at younger than older ages. The green line on the population plot shows the population topped out at about 19 million, almost double the original population of 10 million. In contrast, the "Without Aid" pyramid shows the original situation projected onwards, with olders being replaced by many more youngers. The population plot blue line (matches the "Without Aid" blue label) shows this population at around 53 million, grown 5-fold in 80 years, and still climbing steeply.

Understanding the population pyramids is not critical to playing the game. However, the "With Aid" and "Without Aid" outcomes folders below them are tracking the lives of the highlighted age group and its descendants.

You can't manipulate the pyramids by clicking, etc.