Mumbai: In a ground floor room in the crowded Utkarsha Co-operative Housing Society in Andheri (East), two groups of children, of varying ages, sit lined up against the walls on each side. The room has no furniture, save for a table near the entrance. On the floor is an assortment of coloured pieces of paper cut into squares, each bearing a number.
Taking turns, kids from each row step forward to play an improvised version of Twister (the American game where participants have to place their hands and feet on different colours, often leading to amusing physical contortions). Here, the children play not just with colours but also with numbers. “Right foot yellow,” an instructor tells a boy of 13, followed by “left hand 16”. Depending on each child’s proficiency the instructions could just stay at the level of colours and numbers or they could get tougher. “Right foot on the sum of 16 plus 5,” the instructor says as the boy, after a little hesitation, sticks a foot out to cover the number 21.
It’s close to 3 p.m., well past school hours. The children here come every day to this room, a crèche run by the Ashadeep Foundation. Once a week, they take part in a two-hour-long play session, of which the modified Twister is just the icebreaker.
The sessions are run by Toybank, an organisation that has pioneered a unique approach to helping disadvantaged children develop their social and cognitive skills. And since this is done using educational toys and games, it also allows the children to preserve a sense of their childhood and a happiness that comes with playtime.
Toybank sets up toy and game libraries on premises where its partner NGOs work, so it’s not an isolated intervention. And they work primarily with at-risk children. This crèche run by the Ashadeep Foundation, for instance, is for children who have lost one parent and who need a space to go to for homework and recreation while their surviving parent is at work.
On this particular afternoon in early April, the 20-odd children are warned beforehand that their play session may be cut short because they have to study for exams. They are having none of it. After playing Twister they are split into different groups based on age and play with a variety of board games, from simple dice games like snakes and ladders to other business-oriented games modelled on Monopoly.
Playing and learning
This may seem like a normal play session but, says Lakshman Gaikwad, the Toybank field officer who is supervising the session, it took a while to get here. “When we first started, it was hard to get the kids to concentrate on one game and to co-operate with each other. We had issues, like the boys not wanting to play with girls and vice-versa. Those issues have slowly been resolved and the kids come regularly for the sessions.”
Field officers like Mr. Gaikwad, who used to work as a teacher for special-needs children, do up to five play sessions a day, four days a week, plus one day at the Toybank headquarters to strategise how best to use and adapt each game.
Toybank also organises collection drives for board games and other toys, and when these games come in, they need to be coded and then appropriately deployed. A lot of research, Mr. Gaikwad says, goes into what games to use for different children: kids who are hyperactive, for instance, or those who are slow learners, or those with disabilities. Since they started in 2004, Toybank has built 278 game libraries that they operate in over 280 centres in Mumbai (and even in some parts of rural Maharashtra, through 67 partner organisations like Ashadeep). Overall, they reach around 37,000 children.
For the fun of it
Play therapy has long been part of the conversation on child development in western countries, with benefits such as improvement in social, emotional, life, and motor skills. But when Shweta Chari started Toybank in 2004, she began with a more simple premise: it makes kids happier.
“It started literally after I finished [my] engineering [degree] and I was volunteering with an organisation that was teaching kids,” she says. “I thought that the regular classes were boring, and so I introduced games; from there it just became an ad hoc idea, to distribute toys to children.”
There is still not enough appreciation in India, Ms. Chari says, for just how powerful play can be. “It is never put on a par with other things, but it really changes the way kids think and gives them skill sets that can make them well-rounded adults. Little parameters — like the ability to make good judgment calls, conflict resolution, problem-solving — can all come through play, so, to me, it is one of the most important things.”
Toybank, she says, has already conducted one study in 2012 with a group of kids they had worked with from the Deonar dumping grounds on the benefits of the play sessions and how they have improved crucial development indicators. As the organisation is expanding, they are going in deeper, working now with behavioural therapists and play therapists to create different play modules for kids in different situations.
“We’re trying to understand what kids might need in different situations: a kid living in a shelter home might need a different kind of therapy to a kid who is living in a slum or near a dumping ground for instance.”
No matter how seriously they take the research, one thing will stay the same: playtime is meant to be fun.
Toybank
Founder: Shweta Chari
Founded: 2004
Source of funds: CSR, private donors
Contacts: toybank.org, mail@toybank.org
