Throughout the first four months of the year, young people between 16 and 21 years of age from various educational centres in the country have participated in Fake Escape, an initiative promoted by the Banco Sabadell Foundation, the Exit Foundation and Mobile Week (Mobile World Capital Barcelona), with the support of Learn To Check as educational partner. This social programme aims to provide the tools and encourage critical use of content among new generations in the fight against disinformation. The initiative had a total participation of over 80 young people, 5 educational centres and 20 volunteers from Banco Sabadell and other institutions involved.

Aside from the creation of an escape room, during the project challenges were addressed through activities, webinars and other workshops to empower new generations while offering a way to promote digital literacy and train young people to face a future in which they are aware of disinformation. The participants created a thematic escape room in addition to sessions through webinars and working sessions with volunteers, focusing on disinformation and digital verification.

The programme concluded on 21 April with the grand finale, an event in which the five finalists pitched their projects to a specialised jury that selected which of the escape rooms would become a reality. After a complicated deliberation due to the high quality of the five finalist projects, Estrangis, from the Passwork educational centre in Barcelona, was selected for its project Cruzando la frontera (Crossing the border). It is an escape room that recreates the emigrational journey based on real experiences and false information that people find on immigration upon their arrival to Spain. The creation process has been a catharsis and a way to help each other as young people and aims to generate awareness on migration and minorities.

Fake Escape was born with the aim of providing young people with the tools necessary to become a change agent for social transformation. The programme launched challenges focused on issues affecting young people today, aligned with the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, and which are very present in social media: nutrition and healthy lifestyles; sexuality; climate change; tobacco, alcohol and drugs: lies that harm health; disinformation and intergenerational communication; viral lies at schools; myths about gender and identity; or immigration and minorities.

From the Banco Sabadell Foundation, we look forward to making the “Crossing the border” escape room a reality and to continuing learning everything there is to learn from our future generations.