Javadekar inaugurates playroom in South Delhi, play carrom with kids

Students at a South Delhi Municipal Corporation were in for a pleasant surprise on Tuesday when they got to play carrom with union minister Prakash Javadekar.

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The former human resources development minister was at Nigam Pratibha Vidyalaya Kanya in Malviya Nagar to inaugurate “Safe Playroom”, an initiative to provide students with educational toys.

Toy Bank, a Delhi-based organisation, collects toys through collection drives in private schools of Delhi. Each toy is refurbished and repackaged to create toy libraries across India.

“An initiative like this also promotes a spirit of giving among people. It is a good move to ensure that age-appropriate toys are recycled and reach all children. The government too has created a scheme under Samagra Shiksha to provide over 10 lakh government schools with a ₹5,000-₹20,000 grant for sports equipment every year,”Javadekar, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, said.

A brainchild of Vidyun Goel, director of Toybanks, the playrooms are currently present in two south corporation schools in Delhi. “A child’s right to play is completely ignored in our society. So, the idea behind the playrooms is to provide educational and leisure toys to children to improve their learning skills,” she said. “We plan to expand to over 100 schools in a year. Through these safe playrooms, we aim to provide ample time and space for children to play freely. ”

Goel said that an indoor play with different kinds of toys including board games, musical toys, storybooks, puzzles, building blocks, and soft toys would contribute towards the development of language, numeracy, environmental and life skills in children. “In every school, students from all sections and classes will get to visit the playroom once a week and play with age-appropriate toys,” she said.

“We also ensure gender-neutral playrooms. Toys should not be gender-oriented as they help in the cognitive and social development of the child. In our playroom, boys play with kitchen sets,” she said.

Asnat Safi, a class 5 student at the school, said she enjoyed playing with the different kinds of toys available in the playroom. “When we play puzzles, I can feel that our concentration improves. Even the building blocks have numbers and letters on it for younger children.” Her friend and classmate, Madina Ahmed, said her favourite part was “learning fraction system through the pizza puzzle”.