Free Education
Play-based Education to Help Vulnerable Children
ChildsPlay International (CPI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring free education and creative play for every child. Our storytelling method combines listening and sharing to foster creativity, self-expression, and healing from trauma.
CPI leverages existing spaces and local talent to create low-cost, high-impact programs through our Pop-up Classrooms.
By collaborating with local organizations, we implement our storytelling program in community centers, libraries, schools and village squares. This approach maximizes engagement without the need for new facilities, making it sustainable and accessible for vulnerable children.
Our program’s goal is to foster intellectual growth, critical thinking, and the acquisition of skills and knowledge that enable individuals to lead fulfilling and productive lives while celebrating local culture.
Play-based Learning
Play is not just fun; it’s an educational powerhouse. Through activities such as storytelling, drawing and play, children in our program discover their unique capabilities and develop self-confidence, friendships and improve literacy.
Children learn the rules of a game and, beyond that, how to make spatial and temporal judgments. They also learn soft skills, like how to win and lose with grace. They learn their own unique capabilities and develop self-confidence. Play serves as a powerful educational tool, offering valuable lessons in a dynamic and engaging manner.
Play-based learning fosters active, holistic development by nurturing problem-solving, creativity, and social-emotional intelligence. It encourages exploration, critical thinking, and joyful learning through activities like puzzles, imaginative role-play, and interactive games, deepening our understanding of the world.
healing while learning
Free Education
In Migori Kenya, CPI works with a local community leader and community center to help girls at risk of child marriage share their experiences in a safe environment. Storytelling has proven to be an effective program to help children heal.
Illiteracy is a huge problem in Pakistan, with 40% of the population thought to be illiterate. CPI has partnered with the incredible artist and childcare activist Huma Jalwat. Her organization teaches the art of painting and drawing to vulnerable, illiterate (former) street children in Peshawar. Huma puts a roof over 250 children’s heads and has already held two Storytelling events (read about it here).
CPI’s Programs Around the world
Holistic Education
In Manipur, India, CPI worked with the respected filmmaker, Somi Roy, to capture Manipur’s indigenous games, as part of our Cultural Conservation initiative. The boy is drawing during a Storytelling session.
In Sri Lanka, CPI partnered with Nanda Waninaika, who runs a school and multidisciplinary collective, to reintroduce the children to play, creative activities, and games.
Storytelling is the Oldest Form of Education
Storytelling serves as a powerful medium for sharing experiences and help children heal from trauma. Stories engage our thinking, emotions, and imagination all at once. Narratives serve a purpose beyond literature; they can effectively illustrate even the most intricate and abstract ideas. Incorporating storytelling into education can take various forms, including reading books, and sharing personal experiences. Storytelling holds the key to unlocking the realms of personal imagination and fostering a sense of shared love within local communities. CPI is dedicated to enhancing children’s mental health, education, and overall well-being through the medium of play-based learning. Regardless of whether we refer to it as Mask-making or Storytelling, this endeavor fundamentally constitutes education.
Storytelling for Emotional Healing
Some of our Storytelling partners use CPI’s Storytelling Program to help heal children. Storytelling provides a powerful avenue for children to heal emotionally. Storytelling allows children to explore their experiences, emotions, and perspectives in a safe and supportive environment, ultimately aiding in their recovery and resilience-building.
By bringing together the young and the old, storytelling becomes a catalyst for community building and forging lasting connections.
Empowering Education Through Storytelling
CPI supports an innovative project to preserve the story-telling traditions of Peru’s indigenous cultures.
When Peruvian children draw and paint the stories that they hear, they learn to make visual interpretations of linguistic portrayals, transposing ideas from one medium into another. They learn that interpreting their cultural heritage is a means of preserving culture, even as they make that heritage into a foundation for personal expression.
Of course, these are complex lessons – real cognitive feats – but the children pick up in the midst of having fun. So, while we integrate learning into all our activities, the children never feel pressured (as they might at school). If they feel challenged and have the sense of rising to that challenge, we feel that we have succeeded.
Educating First Generation of Female Mask-makers in Haiti
Mask-making workshop in Haiti offers another example of how CPI promotes education. The children learn a culturally important skill. They learn to work with their hands, and to produce real art from the commonest of materials. They begin to understand that creating an aesthetic object – valued by everyone – is within their own capacity. Such realizations foster a can-do sense that they are themselves valuable, and able to make a contribution to their community. Thus, mask-making demonstrates how acquiring even the most manual skills can have wider (positive!) implications, both for children and for cultures under stress.
Song and Dance
Song and dance, in places like Kenya and Sri Lanka, have produced similar results. As the children learn, they develop a sense of agency. They take charge, becoming spontaneous and, hence, creative. At CPI, we believe that play – and its educational benefits – engage the whole child, allowing the child to grow and develop in ways that will remain beneficial into maturity. Our goal is to promote fun and, with it, a type of education that remains with the child long after the initial fun is just a memory.
