Building Life-skills for 150,000 children

Dear Toybank Project Supporters,

We wish you a Happy 2018! It’s always a pleasure to share our reports on GlobalGiving and know that we have the backing of beautiful people like you who inspire us to keep doing what we do.

When children play, being rich or poor or from a different community becomes immaterial. Just like in our lives, the only thing that truly matters is that we love, respect and cherish each other. It's being good that's important. This goodness is defined by how much we value loving and being loved. When we put aside all that which makes us prejudiced, will we succeed in imparting the same values to children along with focusing on their happiness and wellbeing, ensuring they are secure, well-stimulated with knowledge and right values.

Toybank, registered under The Opentree Foundation, constantly works to provide children with access to healthy play and games to ultimately reach our long-term goal of addressing development needs in children. Specifically, for the months of October and November 2017, Toybank has conducted 246 play sessions at our centres across Mumbai, reaching out to 4451 children. In these two months, we have also conducted Training sessions for 25 Teachers from 3 of our NGO partners. We also distributed toys which address the emotional needs of children, to 2118 children from across 20 of our Play centers.

With a mission to provide Play in the lives of all children, Toybank also conducts sensitization workshops on the Power of Play for parents and young adults. On November 14^th and 16^th, 2017, we sensitized over 4000 employees from 2 very large corporate organizations. This is what one of the senior management members had to say,
“It was amazing to have your (Toybank) team come and share your wonderful work with us. I am so thankful we have started our relationship and I hope it goes from strength to strength. Thank you so much for bringing Toybank to our organisation. We truly appreciate your infectious enthusiasm at the game sessions that left us asking for more! The sessions were a huge success, thanks to the passion with which you drove them. Very inspiring.”

Our annual event, the ‘Toybank Fiesta 2017’ took place on 25^th and 26^th November. It involved sensitization talks, panel discussions, a small exhibition, and even musical performances by children and young upcoming bands. This event saw over 450 individuals from all walks of life come in support of Toybank’s work. It was a very inspiring and motivating moment for Team Toybank.

Story from the Field:

Hari (name changed) is a 7-year old young boy who is a regular at our Play Center in a Government Primary School. Hari lives with his parents in a small village called Surdi. His parents want him to study hard and do well in life. 

Through our play sessions and regular interactions, we noticed that Hari did not enjoy attending school and always felt bored to go because of his disinterest in studies. Because of this attitude, he was scolded by his parents on a daily basis. The constant nagging did not create a positive impact on him and he ended up being late to school every single day. He had poor concentration ability that hindered him from learning well. All the frustration of not performing well somewhere made him introverted and even disrespectful towards his classmates and elders.

Our team immediately started working with more focus on helping Hari out. Our field officer slowly initiated a discussion with Hari, all the while ensuring that Hari is playing with simple board games. We also ensured that he interacted with other children through the play methods by which he could learn to work better in teams and also his confidence in asking more questions and being able to, therefore, speak up. Hari became a champ at playing team based games and this made him realize the value of others and thus respecting them. He is constantly improving and is a regular at all our play sessions.
Hari is much happier, better focused and is now willing to learn and without fear.

At Toybank, we are solving the puzzle, one piece at a time. Just like solving a jigsaw needs strategy — collating color groups, shapes, arranging sections of colors — Toybank has a meticulous method to get us closer to our goal of giving our children a happy childhood through healthy play. Just like the puzzle isn't solved till every single piece is in place, at Toybank, we are putting in all our efforts to make it a complete picture of happy children everywhere.

We sincerely thank you all for the generous contributions and hope that you continue to support us. Do hit the donate button on our Project page to strengthen our foundation furthermore.

With Warm Regards & Best wishes for 2018,

Shweta Chari

Links:

• Media Article on Toybank in May 2017