World Play Report from World Forum on Early Care and Education meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2011
VISION STATEMENT:
Every child around the world has the time, space, opportunity, and resources to play.
MISSION STATEMENT:
The mission of World Play is to inspire and support global efforts to promote play as central to children’s growth, development, and learning.
Growth, excitement and active participation characterized The Working Group on Play at the 2011 World Forum on Early Care and Education in Honolulu. One new feature was to incorporate play into its sessions and preconference workshops. Communication among listserv members to share ideas and interests before the meetings helped the group to plan their focus on two general topics: “Best Practices for Nurturing Children’s Active and Creative Play” and “Societal Barriers to Children’s Active and Creative Play, and How to Overcome Them.” Presenters from Saudi Arabia, Australia, United Kingdom, Nigeria, Peru and the United States spoke in well-attended sessions about:
- Play therapy
- Peace and play
- Empowering parents to play
- Applying Vygotskian theories in the classroom
- Barriers to teachers’ engaging children in play
- The impact of the growing academic emphasis in early years
- How limitations on risk-taking stifles play
- Commercialization and increasing screen time as a threat to play
The presentations, augmented by facts, figures and pictures, at each session stimulated lively discussion, while beach balls and drawing materials provided opportunities for participants to play.
Pre-conference workshops which took place on the two days before the World Forum officially began, offered an opportunity for participants to share concerns about play, explore issues and connect on a deeper level than is possible at the conference sessions. Each day included three sessions of discussion and planning, and one session of play on the beach. Several participants from the 2009 meetings reminded us that a group discussing play would benefit from experiencing play, so we did! When in Hawaii it seems most natural to play on the beach. We experimented with sand buildings, with and without tools, and played in the water. We will definitely include a play experience in our future meetings. At one session we were able to hear the expertise, experiences and advice of David Elkind who has written extensively on the topic of children and play. We asked him questions and discussed the state of play in today’s world. Other sessions involved exercises focused on Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to promoting creative and active play, as well as an opportunity to work through ideas and formulate a vision and mission statement for the group. We brainstormed to coin a more exciting name than “Working Group on Play,” and chose to call our group “World Play”
Our future plans include:
- Further development of the World Play web page on the World Forum site where it can be found under Initiatives. The web site will be updated to include new information about topics for discussion, resources to provide support for creative and active play, and listings of conferences and meetings around the world where play will be a prominent topic. We hope that members will send in articles describing their ideas and programs to stimulate discussion. Kathy Laskowski volunteered to continue to monitor the web page and send information to World Forum staff for posting. The importance of participation by many of the group to keep the web page current was emphasized.
- Design of a logo to identify the group and give it more visibility on the home page of the World Forum.
- Continuation of our global listserv as a means of staying in contact and sharing ideas. We will send out monthly reminders about new postings on the World Play web page and ask play advocates to contribute ideas and meeting opportunities to the site. Kathy Laskowski will coordinate this info. Many new names were added to the listserv at the meeting, and we continue to add names as requests are submitted. The listserv allowed participants who had been part of the Working Group on Play in 2009, as well as those who were newer to the group but couldn’t attend the meetings in Hawaii, to be involved in generating ideas and discussions as we prepared for the meetings. Many expressed enthusiasm and thanks for the opportunity to be included, even from afar. We find that the listserv helps all of us around the world to support one another.
The main goals we hope to accomplish before the next forum are to keep the World Play web page up to date and relevant, and to facilitate communication about play topics on the listserv. If these goals are met, we would like to move forward with ideas and hopes that were expressed at the 2011 meetings to find ways to develop funding and support that would allow us to be better heard around the world as advocates for creative and active play. As we prepare for the next World Forum meeting in 2013 we hope to clarify the function and purpose of the working group before the session. Some of the attendees thought that they were going to learn about play at that time, not understanding that the purpose of the pre-conference sessions was to strengthen the group and determine how we can best work together. Another important point is for World Play to place a high priority on play-time, for ourselves and others. We look forward to many future opportunities to work and play together.