September 7, 2015

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According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31, “every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities”. It is with the goal of ensuring this right that BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BIED) started piloting 50 play centres in both rural and urban areas of Bangladesh since June 2015. This large-scale project, which will be piloting play centre models for the next five years, will cater to children as young as six months, to up to five years of age.

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According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31, “every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities”. It is with the goal of ensuring this right that BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BIED) started piloting 50 play centres in both rural and urban areas of Bangladesh since June 2015. This large-scale project, which will be piloting play centre models for the next five years, will cater to children as young as six months, to up to five years of age.

These play centres aim to create awareness regarding how play can be used as a tool or platform for children’s development—“From the perspective of neuroscience, they [the play centres] will help in connecting neurons and help children in cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development from as early as six months of age,” says Dr Nishat Fatima Rahman, coordinator of the psychosocial counselling unit, BIED.

Syeda Sazia Zaman, senior research fellow of BIED and the focal person for the play centre project, believes there is a gap in early childhood education in the country; the Bangladeshi government has started pre-primary education for 5-6 year-old children, but there are very limited facilities present for children aged 6 months to 5 years. “This is the gap BIED is trying to fill,” Sazia Zaman says.

One of the integral components of these play centres are the ‘play facilitators’— the adolescents and young women who conduct the sessions at the centres. These facilitators were chosen through an extensive selection process and have been trained by a group of experts at BIED who specialise in early childhood development.

“A positive by-product of this project is that it will help decrease the rate of early marriages for the girls working at the centres”, says Sazia Zaman. She believes that since these girls have become more independent, they will have more agency on their lives. The training they receive will help them to contribute to their communities and help them to teach in preschools in the future.

According to the play facilitators, working at these centres is bringing a positive impact on their own lives in many ways. Tania, a college student and a play facilitator, says that she is able to buy her own books and pay her tuition fees with her salary. “We are learning a lot from working with children. People from our community show us more respect now,” she adds.

Championing women’s empowerment is at the core of all of BRAC’s interventions. By mobilising women to be more involved in developmental work in their own communities, these play centre models will not only lead to a brighter future for the children, but also a brighter future for the young women – the play facilitators themselves.

The Institute of Educational Development, BRAC University (IED, BU), founded in 2004, has recently been renamed to BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BIED). 

 

Tamoha Binte Siddiqui is communications and advocacy officer, BIED.

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