For most children, playing with toys is an important way to learn and
develop. For children with disabilities, it can also help support specific
challenges. Toys have been known to encourage better communication and
improve mobility and of course can be lots of fun.
However, access to toys is a luxury for many children in India, a gap that
Toybank – Development through Play has been working to fill
for the last 15 years.
Toybank does this by recycling toys, meaning it collects used toys, fixes
them and gives them away to schools and homes for unprivileged children
across India.
In Maharashtra, Toybank also reaches out to over 950
children with disabilities.
Toybank reaches out to around 955 children with disability through 30 play
centers. This is specific to Maharashtra, and specific to children with
disability, we have 13 urban and three rural centers. We have been working
with children with disabilities from the very inception since many centres
have a mix of children, with and without disabilities. – Madhulika
Dhindaw, Head, Welfare For Toybank – Development through Play
Apart from regular toys and games that hold universal appeal, Toybank also
chooses specific toys for children with disabilities depending on the play
center’s need.
“We curate every play center to develop or enhance certain skills. We keep
the nature of the disability in mind during the selection of toys and games
for the center,” says Dhindaw. “They are chosen keeping in mind the fun
element which helps break the ice and gets them involved with activities as
well as help them gain knowledge.”
This includes multi-sensory games like Memory Skills, Mind Challenge, Puzzle,
Mosaic Fun, etc that help increase spatial memory, and dexterity, Mec-O-Tec,
Mechanix, Junior Architect and other such building materials to improve
grasping and arranging techniques, and games like Dog & the Bone, Master
Kit, Guess Who, Hide N Seek to increase tactile recognition, strategic
abilities, and hand eye coordination. “Toys which enable gross motor skills
and fine motor skill are also kept in mind,” adds Dhindaw.
Toybank carries out collection drives across Mumbai, at schools,
housing societies, offices, etc to get the toys and games for its centers.
When the drives do not throw up specific requirements, Toybank procures them.
Among the schools in Mumbai it has partnered with is Sodawala Lane
School, a government school, which reaches out to over 100 children
with intellectual and physical disabilities.
“The toys and games Toybank provides us with focus on motor skills,
hand-eye coordination, cognitive development as well as communication
skills,” says Principal Ashlesha Pawar. “So there are
puzzles where on one side you have the picture of an animal and on the other
a picture of the food it eats or habitat. This way they learn and have
fun.”
This experience is backed by research that shows toys support concrete
learning as well as perceptions, motor functioning and communication.
Gayathri Sridhar, special educator and member of
Special Child Assistance Network (SCAN), a Chennai-based
network of parents with children with disabilities says basic concepts of
cognition are well understood by children with the help of toys.
“For shapes, visual perceptions, size, and colour counting, we start with
toys only. I use wooden toys both at home and school. Pallanguzhi, an
ancient Tamil board game, is a must keep at home. Math concepts are easily
done with it. They help in fine motor functioning. Finger puppets help with
many concepts on motor skills like finger separation to creative expression.
Many children would develop intent to communicate n socialize when we use
toys.”
This learning, however, is something many children with disabilities miss out
on, given how expensive many toys and games are. This makes Toybank’s
initiative invaluable, as Pawar points out. “Toys and games are very
expensive and since we rely a lot of donor support, we don’t really have
the funds to allocate towards this, so this partnership with Toybank is very
important to us.”
Be it a sense of independence, security or imagination, toys and games play a
critical role in every child’s development. To help build greater awareness
about this, Toybank also conducts workshops on sensitization to sensitize
people about the power of play for all children.
Source: https://newzhook.com/story/21062
