By Pooja Saiya | Project Contributor
Dear Supporter,
Thank you for your continued support over the years. :)
I’m delighted to share updates on what The Opentree Foundation (TOF) has been working on during the first quarter of FY 2025–26.
This period is always a crucial time for us, as we focus on planning for the academic year ahead — preparing resources, training our implementation team, and finalising partnerships. It’s a season of reflection, preparation, and renewed commitment to our mission.
Read on to see what our team has been up to over the past three months!
1. Playworkers Unnati Workshop Series:
The ‘Playworkers Unnati Workshop Series’ is our internal dedicated capacity-building session for our programme Outreach team. In Q1, while the schools stay shut for Summer vacations, our team puts dedicated efforts to prepare for the new academic year. The sessions conducted serve as both onboarding for new members and refresher training for existing Outreach Playworkers (OPWs). The objective was to equip the team to effectively deliver the programme throughout the year, while aligning them with the organisation’s vision of integrating PLAY-based methodologies into classroom learning. The sessions also focused on helping the team adopt playful approaches to engage with children and build their capacities in areas such as playful facilitation, classroom and behaviour management and observing play. Additionally, the team also received training on relationship-building and stakeholder engagement through various Communication and Volunteer Engagement-based sessions.
2. On-ground Play Sessions:
Play is the primary way in which children explore a world that is not in their control. TOF’s Play centres are safe spaces for children to explore and engage in developmentally-appropriate play sessions. The play sessions are typically hour-long and begin with pep-up, fun and movement-based activities and are aimed at starting the session on a joyful note. This is followed by children engaging in carefully-curated and strategically chosen games and play-based materials. Our OPWs and teachers support children to understand the games, learn through them, work in groups, help them think independently and more. The play session ends with another pep-up, in addition to children sharing what they liked the most about the day’s play session and what they learned. These play sessions are conducted with children between 3 to 13 years at schools.
During quarter one, the Programme team members and teachers conducted 1,584 Play Sessions across Maharashtra.
3. Transformative ‘Power of Play’ Workshops for Teachers:
On-ground "Power of Play" training sessions were conducted with the school teachers to make them aware and knowledgeable about play-based learning and re-orient them on TOF's play programmes. These training sessions help them understand the impact of developmentally appropriate play on the childhood to adulthood outcomes in children. They are trained on new games and how to effectively use them in classrooms, as part of their daily teaching, in order to build a healthy and stronger student-teacher bond.
Our Programme Team conducted 8 ‘Power of Play’ workshops, training 68 teachers of Maharashtra during this period.
4. Delivery & Replenishment of Games at Play Centres:
The programme team periodically conducts stock and quality checks at the Play centres to identify the status of games. The team ensures that children have access to not just age-appropriate and category-wise games, but also that these games are in good condition. Upon identification of the need, new games were sent to the play centres.
Over 3700+ games were delivered across 55 play centres during this period.
5. Volunteers Engaged:
Volunteers play a crucial role in supporting the TOF team to ensure children continue to learn through play. They support us on-ground in Play sessions, providing support to our OPWs in classroom management and increasing the student engagement with Play. And Off-ground supporting our Support teams with spreading awareness about the cause through various projects.
A total of 21 volunteers supported during this quarter.
6. International Day of Play Global Roundtable: “Choose Play, Everyday”:
To celebrate International Day of Play, we organised a Global Roundtable on June 11th. The Roundtable featured powerful insights from our panelists Dr. Sarah Aiono (Longworth Education), Tia Mathisen (Playworks), Ingrid Srinath (Resource Alliance) and Shweta Chari (The Opentree Foundation) where they discussed the urgent need to embed play in education systems, public policy, and community spaces, and to reframe play as a Right for every child. This roundtable, moderated by Smarinita Shetty (Indian Development Review) was attended by over 200 participants who were reminded of the importance of building a world where every child’s right to play is protected, practised and prioritised.
By Pooja Saiya | Project Contributor
By Pooja Saiya | Project Leader
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