Tali Kaplinski Tarlow, the founder of Israel Scaventures had a big dream, in fact it was a global dream – to run a “virtual” Jewish scavenger hunt for families across the world. She had placed this dream on hold as she grew her Scavenger Hunt business in Israel with “in person” hunts led by guides in the Old City, Nachlaot, Jaffa and Tzfat.
Then Corona hit and it was time to pivot her strategy. With the current “stay at home” orders in many countries across the world & kids home from school, the time was right.
Israel ScaVentures ran two online Quarantine Quest games in the last month – one the week before Pesach which lasted for 7 days and then again on Chol Hamoed for two days. The games had more than 1000 participants, 200 teams, playing in 3 languages (Hebrew, English and Spanish) from 7 different countries (Israel, USA, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, England and Germany).
The teams competed against each other with missions and solving clues without leaving their homes.
So how do you get families from across the world to compete together in such a large game? Leave that to Tali and her incredible staff.
Families were encouraged to team up with friends and family living in other cities and even other countries to enlarge their options. Using a sophisticated app, Tali and her team sent out missions to the families to complete.
Wanting to know more, we asked Tali to give us some examples of the missions.
“Our games are built with a unique mix of mission types –sports missions, crafting, acting, dancing, and researching” said Tali. “We always make sure to have missions that cause people to think about how they can do something good in the world – now, today, part of the game!”
Sample Mission
The Desert Dash – around 3000 years after the Exodus, this has finally been declared an Olympic sport! Present the rules of the sport and demonstrate with 10 people how it works.
TIP: The sportsmen and women do NOT need to be a part of your nuclear team, ask some friends to help! You can use the chat to tell us how many houses participated in this mission.
BONUS POINTS: Bonus points go to teams who are extra creative, funny and “professional”!
Teams submitted their answers via the app where Tali’s professional staff rated the answers and applied points to the teams.
After such a successful launch, players from around the world can look forward to themed Quarantine Quests for all the upcoming special days and festivals – Yom HaÁtzmaut, Lag BaOmér, Yom Yerushalayim and Shavuot. For these games, Israel ScaVentures is looking for ambassadors who can put together groups of participants – it can be your friends, family, colleagues, clients. The idea is to bring fun to your community or bring family members from across the world together for this experience.
But it doesn’t stop there. Israel ScaVentures have also developed private virtual personalized scavenger hunts for Bar/Bat Mitzvah groups whose celebrations have been cancelled or “gone virtual”, allowing family abroad to join in the celebration.
For Jewish singles, Tali has created a version of the game together with Daniella Rudolph from Marriage Architect, that creates an informal and fun way for singles to extend their social circle while having some creative fun. The game was created with lots of thought and attention to dating needs.
We ended our interview with Tali by asking her how the Quarantine Quest fits into her overall personal mission.
“The Scaventures missions have always been to Educate, to Engage, to Inspire. The Quarantine Quest dovetails with this mission as our staff continues to provide content that results in an experience that is fun, meaningful, inspiring and engaging for all kinds of groups.”
Let the games begin!
