Building Life-skills for 150,000 children

Dear Toybank Supporters,

We hope you have had a splendid year so far!
We are steadily wrapping up the financial year 2017-18 and are very proud of how it has gone. It has been a year of wonderful challenges, lots of new findings and most importantly, a year of going in-depth with our work.

Specifically, for the months of December, January and February 2018, Toybank has conducted 397 play sessions at our centers across Mumbai, reaching out to 10,711 children. In these three months, we have also trained 132 Teachers to drive the Power of Play from 16 of our Non-Profit partners.

Through our work, Toybank addresses plenty of subtle areas that are many times overlooked. Situations of gender discrimination, or of children struggling with confidence and anger issues, all these are quietly getting tackled through our Play interventions. We have been documenting these moments of change, and as our team member puts it, “there is something about these moments that keep me going.”

Moments of Change (in the words of our team member from the field):

A Girl and a Bike:

“In our Play Centre, we keep a balance of games which have been stereotyped.
As I was growing up, I never got to play with games which would teach me to make vehicles. I don’t even remember having a toolset. One of the reasons why I fail to understand the electrical wirings in my house or don’t like to hold the saw in my handwork with the wooden bars or even consider making anything which looks remotely like a vehicle is because my brain tells me this is a GUY thing and you don’t KNOW it. As I started seeing the games in the Toybank Play centers, I got more and more conscious of the fact that these biases need to be broken.

At one of our centers, I handed over a Mechanix (a mini engineering building set) to set to a girl. I also assumed that she would return it to me! I had also started planning my spiel for her as to how she should not be having these biases etc. To my absolute surprise, the girl took the set and opened it and quickly started working on it. I told myself – she will not play with it. I kept a close watch on her. Checked almost every 10 minutes. But to my absolute happiness, she kept at it. She kept at it – nothing could distract her, the sound and the chaos that surrounded her did not distract her. She made the bike.

I was so proud of her! I had this immense sense of HOPE, I suppose. I said a SILENT PRAYER …may we keep empowering girls and may we keep getting reassured that there is so much hope around us…that girls can make bikes, that girls can break all the stereotypes …and live a life beyond the boundaries that I have grown up with!”

A simple toy/game or play activity has the power to influence a child in the most impressionable years of their life. In the new fiscal year, we are embarking into a new phase of mining deep into the potential of Play and fine-tuning our intervention; to truly harness the limitless Power of Play.

We are ever so grateful to you for always watching out for us. We hope you continue to back us up as it is only when we all work together can we actually drive permanent & impactful change to the society at large.

With Warm Wishes on behalf of the whole team,

Shweta Chari
Founder - Chief Toybanker