Play International
Project Grantee

PLAY International is a multi-country organization dedicated to designing and implementing educational and inclusion projects, and to train teachers in utilizing sports and sports games as educational tools to empower marginalized and vulnerable children, and especially young girls.

 

Through using sports as a tool, important social themes are brought up and tackled, such as school access to everyone, sex-equality, inclusion of children with special needs, harmony in the community, preemptive health measures, and social cohesion.

 

Since its creation in 1999, Play International has put in motion educational and humanitarian projects in over 20 countries, and has trained over 15,000 facilitators, who have impacted over one-million children.

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Play International's expertise is centered on the creation of pedagogical content, training for teachers and facilitators, and capacity building of Social Change Organizations (SCOs). This strategic capacity building is progressively integrated into all new programs launched, supported in part by the New Africa Fund's incubator funding.​ Some of Play International's major initiatives have been: 

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• promoting sex-equality and protecting women and girls by developing pedagogical sports games for the prevention of gender-based violence in Senegal and Burundi. 

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• planning and activities for inclusion of children with disabilities, which includes creating a change of perspective among future sports teachers, empowering disabled children through sports activities, and creating spaces where children with and without disabilities can play together.

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• ​REKA is the first project by Play International in Rwanda, initiated in 2023 to prevent sex-based, age-based, and disability-based violence in Rwanda, through play and sports. The expected outcome is through sports games, to educate young girls and boys, with or without disability, to know their rights, to be aware of different forms of violence (especially sexual violence, and violence towards children and children with disabilities), to know about the available services of support, and to actively participate in the efforts of raising awareness, through playful education.​​