Women and Children First is looking to launch a new project in Ghana - providing under 5s and their parents with toys, adapted to include important health messaging.
One day Yaba says she wants to be a doctor. But right now, she is three years old and lives with her family in rural Ghana.
Yaba’s future is under threat. Unless she can get the nurturing opportunities that she needs to learn through play, is adequately fed and can stay healthy, Yaba will not be able to fulfil her dreams. Her development will stall and she may never catch up.
Women and Children First is developing a new concept – enhancing children’s toys with important health messaging, stimulating children and giving parents vital information that can help them nurture their children to survive and thrive.
With your help, we can pilot this new idea through nurseries in Ghana.
Would you please donate £30 this Christmas, which could fund adapted toys, helping stimulate several children through play, while supporting parents with important information.
Around the world too many young children are at risk of malnutrition, ill health, and a lack of stimulating play opportunities.
Challenges like these in the first six years of life can have severe impacts that carry on into adulthood, affecting their health and ability to escape from the vicious cycle of poverty.
Parent-child support programmes are often constrained to focus on one of these challenges at a time. But this means the other topics can be neglected. Long-term this can be catastrophic for children.
Women and Children First has developed Play++ toys as a low-cost, simple and scalable solution.
An example Play++ shape sorter toy, with health messaging included on the shapes
The toys are enhanced with stickers so while children play their parents and carers are also supported with information about health and sickness danger signs, disease prevention and nutritional advice.
And new toys are not always required. Existing toys can also be converted into Play++ toys, making them multi-purpose, reducing waste and improving cost-effectiveness.
Your gift this Christmas can help children like Yaba in some of the world’s poorest, most rural communities. Please donate £30, or give what you can, to help them, or other women and children where there is the greatest need.
Women and Children First is looking to test the concept in 2022, collaborating with caregivers and children in Ghana, to develop a set of toys that respond to their needs, and evaluate their effectiveness on child development.
Women and Children First has a proven track record of developing new community-led approaches.
This year we piloted personalised antenatal, postnatal and immunisation wall calendars in Ethiopia; crucial when attendance of antenatal care appointments in the first trimester can be as low as 17%.
Orientation session of community health volunteers at Finchir Kebele
These wall calendars give women important information about their appointments, encouraging attendance, which can be crucial for the mother’s health and the baby’s development.
Based on the date of the pregnant woman’s last period, local health workers use a ‘contact calculator’, turning it to identify the correct dates. These are marked on the wall calendar, hung in the woman’s home, detailing her important appointments.
So far, over 370 women have received their wall calendars. Over 1,000 women will receive calendars by spring next year.
Community health volunteers using contact calculator at Burka Bido Kebele
Pregnant women are already saying that they have been happy to receive the calendars and are finding them useful and helpful.
Over the last 20 years Women and Children First has been able to test and develop life-changing, life-saving approaches that have reached over 12 million people in 13 countries.
Through our supporters’ kind donations, we have been able to help thousands of women and children to survive and thrive.
With your help we can get toys to those children who need them most.
Please donate £30, or give what you can, enabling us to support more children like Yaba.