Building Life-skills for 150,000 children

COVID-19 and its impact on children’s mental well-being 

The COVID-19 pandemic has gripped at-risk children in India the hardest. School shutdown, separation from friends, uncertainty, anxiety and lack of safe spaces are jeopardizing their mental and social-emotional well-being.

As social distancing and maintaining hygiene habits cater to our physical safety, Resilience will give children the power to bounce back from mental stress. This innate power to rise against adversity needs to be developed during formative years to reap its benefits for a lifetime. This can be perfectly built through Play while problem solving, persevering till the end goal, patience while taking turns and doing one’s best even in difficulty. Toybank strongly believes Play can build in every child, the vitality to combat adversity.

"Play is food for the child's mind. Let it not go hungry"

During the lockdown, children have been away from their happy and safe spaces, learning opportunities and their social support system—peer groups and teachers. From spending time at our Play Centers, they are cooped up in their homes, which are often one-room facilities with heightened risks of infection and distress. This became the reality for 66.6% households in Maharashtra’s slum habitations and the 20 million at-risk children in the state. A respite was immediately the need of the hour. Overnight, children were thrown into the throes of economic hardships, isolation and fear of an uncertain future.

Our team immediately devised an alternative plan to provide Play to our children at their homes, so that they will emerge from this crisis unscathed. It’s crucial that the socio-emotional progress and mental well-being in our children is not reversed due to the lockdown. For routine-like normalcy, meaningful engagement and mental stimulation, we are delivering carefully-curated digital #ToybankPlayAtHomeKits to them through support groups with our partners, on WhatsApp.

Children have taken to these kits with the same excitement they have at our Play Centers.“I played them back-to-back for two-three days. I like games that make me move,” says Parth (name changed) who misses being on his toes and is now enjoying our Tail the Animal and Listening Game the most. While for Niharika (name changed), Word Search puzzles are the most fun. “Every time she recognizes a letter and finds words by herself, she is delighted. She even got creative and found words that weren’t on the list,” beams her parent. Since the children can’t take printouts of our Word Search puzzles, they draw the grid on their notebooks and go word hunting. They are not letting lack of supplies stop them and improvising as they go.

Ever since the lockdown, most parents are struggling to keep children meaningfully engaged, including Shamita's mother Vanshika (names changed). However, our Playsheets have ensured Shamita stays mentally stimulated. "They allow her to do age-appropriate activities keeping her interest and enthusiasm alive even during this lean period. Her mind is curious at all times," Vanshika tells us.

Through the Playsheets, Shamita bonds with her brother, developing social skills despite being away from their peers. The siblings enjoy healthy competition while playing. “They become extremely creative and try to think beyond the instructions; like, when they need to cut shapes, they think about all the possible ones other than what’s suggested,” Vanshika divulges. Before the lockdown, the duo had different school timings and interests. Even though they didn’t fight, they never did things together before". These PlaySheets help them think for and help each other; they end up doing the activities together most of the time. "They also learn newer academic things in a fun manner. It feels good seeing this happen,” Vanshika concludes.

Prior to the lockdown, from February to March we had over 550+ Play Sessions for our 56,000+ children across urban and rural Maharashtra (as of 31st March, 2020).

With the mandate of social distancing, April onwards, we started providing two Playsheets daily to our children via support groups of parents and teachers on WhatsApp. On a daily basis, we are reaching out to 15,468 children through 952 teachers and 3,082 teachers via 180 support groups (as of 30th April 2020).

The mental relief that play brings for at-risk children’s mental well-being deserves as much attention as other forms of Covid-19 relief efforts. It’s crucial that they stay happy, stimulated and stress-free to navigate stressful circumstances with confidence and resilience.

Toybank’s efforts are invested in ensuring exactly this, through our play methodology. We are determined to reach every child, especially and with urgency during this crisis and to plug its harmful long-term effects. We have had your steadfast support in building this purposeful World of Play for our children. Together, with you we look forward to strengthening our reach.

Hope you are all in the best health and spirits.

Thank you and Happy Toybanking!

Links:

• Video - Play Must Go On
• Helping children Play at home to cope with Covid-19 anxieties
• Play for Transformation: A Round Table Discussion Part I

The statement that Shweta cites in her sensitization speeches when encouraging individuals to drive social change may seem trivial and humorous but it carries great weight. What she implies is that each young individual has opportunities and resources — education, teachers, friends, music, poetry, art, etc. — to make great strides in their life. Think about what you have and what works for you. Don’t waste time mulling over what you don’t have and what doesn’t work for you. Focus on what you got and go make that change well within your lifetime!

Even at Toybank, to achieve Development Through Play, every key stakeholder takes the lead, an initiative and the opportunity in their own unique way to build a better world for others and themselves. This report will give you a peek into play’s role in building leadership skills through updates and stories of children, teachers, Toybank’s full-time team and our extended family of volunteers.

Stories of Change : The little guides!

Life for children in Andheri East’s slum habitation is bleak and mired in poor housing conditions, inadequate civic amenities, insecurity and unstable livelihoods. Our Play Centers are a safe and nurturing haven for them to build positive socio-emotional skills.

I once arrived at the Play Center suffering from mumps. As soon as the children realized this, two boys — Aayush and Rohan (names changed) — assumed my role of a Programme Officer(PO) and took my responsibilities even though I never asked them to. Not only did they ensure that I wasn’t troubled by the class and maintained a decorum but also managed games distribution, calming the children down and seating them properly. Just like a PO’s role, they made groups and helped conduct the Play Session effortlessly.

With this, the kids displayed thoughtfulness, empathy, maturity, discipline and responsibility. Seeing play make responsible little guides of them, the PO was happy to observe the influence all her play sessions, over the past 5 months, have had on her relationship with the children. The fruits of being there for the children consistently and giving them opportunities to develop key skills was strongly reflected in their behavior

- By Jaya Dhokare, Team Toybank

Outreach in November, December 2019 & January 2020

This quarter we worked collaboratively with close to 140 partner facilitators (teachers, caregivers) in implementing our Conscious Play™ methodologies via 1,200+ Play Sessions to reach over 19,000 children (as of 28th January 2020).

Play sessions:

Children taking the lead

According to numerous leadership researchers, individuals who become effective leaders exhibit or develop five core characteristics — innovativeness, empathy, optimism, self-confidence and curiosity (Barthold, Shelby K., "The Emergence of Leadership in Children: The Role of Play, Athletics, and School" (2014). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 859.) While leaders display these traits in their respective professions, children are not too far behind in developing them through their area of specialization — play.

• Learning leadership and accountability

Children do not always have or aren’t given the opportunity to take responsibilities, which in turn affects their self-confidence. At Toybank’s Play Centers, we use play to inculcate a sense of ownership and responsibility in kids. One such center has a high count of children (more than 50 at times), which makes conducting play sessions a challenge for the PO. To cultivate accountability, the PO appointed a girl and a boy to facilitate the class. They proudly took up the onus of caring for the board games, ensured the session was conducted smoothly and each time there was an argument, sorted it out before the PO could intervene. Soon, the children volunteered to oversee the sessions. They took charge right from handing the games to packing and storing them back neatly. Practising leadership and accountability today will go a long way as adults!

• Being innovative

Preparing to face uncertainty and change requires ingenuity and flexibility in our thinking and decision-making. Through play, children view problems from different perspectives, troubleshoot and think of inventive ways to solve the problem. The kids at one of our Play Sessions proved this while playing Twister. Nothing could stop them from playing! Not even the missing spinner. They wrote the rules on chits, shuffled them in their palms, picked them out randomly and continued playing.

Although an individual continues to learn vital leadership skills past childhood, the skills learned later are built from the skills learned when young, which only stresses the importance of learning them as a child.

A caregiver’s Conscious role in leading development through play

Developing any kind of life skill, including leadership, is dependent on the environment, social context, timing and other individuals (caregivers, teachers, family, classmates, etc.) that children interact with. This is why Toybank’s Conscious Play™ approach has a crucial role. Over the years, and as suggested by research, our team has observed that the more we interact with children at Play Centers, the deeper we understand their developmental needs. This has led to more quality curation of play sessions to address those needs. In a nutshell, we have started being more mindful of how play experiences have impacted children’s behavioral and mental well-being and used a more conscious approach while integrating play in their lives.

Our partner facilitators across Play Centers are trained to implement this Conscious Play™ approach to optimally use board games and play-based activities to empower children. For example, in Solapur district, a primary school teacher used the game of Lotto or Housie to uniquely teach numbers in English and Marathi. Each time, she announced the number in both the languages, thus reinforcing their learning. Post the session, the children were asked to note down the numbers on their ticket in a book to practice and retain this learning. This game helped children to recognize numbers and listen more attentively for the next number coming up. We saw the children stay patient and focused. We also saw the teacher using the play methodology to enhance their learning of numerical and language skills.

Volunteers leading play

• In November, we had a massive Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) initiative led by close to 300 corporate employees. They spent an entire day creating meaningful impact in the lives of over 1,000 children at Toybank’s Play Centers. They focused on conducting activities that enhance learning and build skills. These involved playing a mega-sized crossword on a black board, a game of Pictionary, creating butterflies through the origami folding technique, making craft items with paper plates, painting ice-cream sticks, coloring, etc. One of the highlights of the event was an activity conducted to learn the tricks and strategy of solving the Rubik’s Cube. The corporate volunteers printed a step-by-step guide to understand the components of a Cube and how to solve it.
  
  
• In December, our CAS volunteer, Rehan hosted a special learning session on the conservation of mangroves in Mumbai City and the importance of sustainability in our daily lives. He took inspiration from our play sessions and used play through flashcards to instill a sense of scientific inquiry in the children.
  
  
• During our annual fundraiser, Fiesta 2019, our volunteers played an exceptional role in supporting our team. Even though each volunteer came from a different background - a student, a parent, a corporate employee, etc. - each of them like uniquely shaped mosaic pieces came together as one unit ready to support each other, all with the ultimate goal of pulling off the event seamlessly.

Pushing Play Forward

Conscious Play™ has reached so many children - lesser-privileged as well as affluent, teenagers, adults, teachers, principals, etc. We have seen them be happy, learn joyously, think critically and have responsibility for themselves through play.

We hope the stories and the change we’ve highlighted within this report inspire you to continue supporting our work. We couldn’t have built this play-filled and purposeful world for our children without your support. Once again, we are truly grateful and we look forward to strengthening our work along with you.

Thank you and Happy Toybanking!

Links:

• 15 Favorite board-games recommended by our field team!
• Volunteer Stories : Playing Together
• It takes all of us to create lasting change!