Students from Canarsie High School celebrate the release of the game and Web site they created, Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City.

To mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the nonprofit Global Kids, has launched Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City to showcase the disaster’s heroes and reinforce emergency preparedness.

Just a few years ago, the virtual reality technology used in the game and Web site would have been alien to Carole Artigiani, 67, executive director of Global Kids and a Purpose Prize fellow.

A career path that once seemed incongruous now makes sense to her. “It wasn’t always as obvious to me as it is now, looking back on my life. Three dimensions were coming together: my background as an educator, my experience in social and political movements, and my passion for the issues in our country and the world,” Artigiani said.

Global Kids focuses on global education, civic engagement and academic enrichment for public school students in New York City’s underserved communities, making them aware of pressing international and foreign policy issues.

Her path to her current encore career was a long and winding road. Here early career included teaching and a number of starts at graduate school. She got engaged, her husband was drafted, she had kids, and her husband was transferred.

She thrived when she returned to school, earning a master’s degree in women’s history. In graduate school she wrote her thesis on what she calls “second tier” women activists in Connecticut who were working on issues including anti-child labor, the promotion of nursery schools, public education, birth control rights and education.

She spent eight satisfying years at Sarah Lawrence College as a part-time administrator of the women’s history program.

An itch for something new propelled Artigiani out of her comfortable post. She was persuaded by a friend to take a part-time job working at the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) in New York City. The organization’s president suggested she find a way to educate high school students about world affairs. That grew into Global Kids, which Artigiani founded in 1989.

It was tough at the start. “I had no idea how to do this,” Artigiani remembered. But gradually she drew people of different backgrounds together and learned how to be a leader. “It was a matter of learning by doing,” she explained.

A breakthough came eight years ago, when Global Kids received a grant to bring in a technology expert, with a guaranteed salary for two years. Employees started experimenting with games and engaging kids in online dialogue.

Six months after 9-11, they created an international online dialogue among young people about their current thoughts and responses to the tragedy. The project generated media attention, and Global Kids began receiving grants, starting with the Surdna Foundation. “We’ve been very lucky,” Artigiani acknowledged.

This week the organization will issue the Global Kids Second Life Curriculum, which contains 164 lesson plans to help teachers use Second Life in both formal and informal educational settings.

Artigiani has come to see games as an ideal 21st century vehicle for illustrating global issues and challenges. For example, another Global Kids game, Ayiti: The Costs of Life, helps players experience the obstacle of poverty to education in Haiti, the home country of a number of students who designed the game.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d be doing what I’m doing now,” she says.