Kidzania - a vocation education theme park

KidZania firemen roleplay
[Picture source: www.kidzania.com.sg]

KidZania model city
[Picture source: http://sentimentalfreak.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/kidzania-comes-in-manila-2014/]

KidZania is a Mexican owned company who runs a series of vocation-based theme parks around the world.

Each KidZania location features an indoor scaled-down (2/3 of full size) model city in which children can experience different professions through role-play (following the instructions of animators). Around 60 different establishments (including a hospital, fire station, beauty salon, bank, radio station, supermarket, television station, pizzeria, and theater) offer nearly 100 different role-playing activities.

To simulate the real world, KizdZania teaches capitalist-consumerist values of earning and spending money. The role-play gets rewarded with KidZania's own currency, kidZos, which can be spent within KidZania for goods and services provided by other children working in that profession.

Each Kidzania role-play activity is heavily and directly sponsored by multi-national or local brands (what they call "integrated marketing partnership"). For example, aviation professions are sponsored by American Airlines, bank professions are sponsored by HSBC, hospitality professions are sponsored by Coca Cola, Domino's pizza, Nestle, Kellogg's and Danone, Engineering professions are sponsored by Mitsubishi Motors and Honda, and so on.



Currently, the Kidzania franchise has locations in Mexico City, Monterrey (Mexico), Tokyo, Jakarta, Osaka, Lisbon, Dubai, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Santiago, Bangkok, Kuwait, Mumbai, Cairo, and Istanbul (with several new locations in planning).

Read another blog entry on KidZania here.