PlayRights Magazine-Access to Play in Crisis, Sept 2017

ACCESS TO PLAY

IN CRISIS

JAPAN

Children’s Right To Play Post Disaster

Thailand

Right to Play of Children in Migrant Workers’ Communities

India

Everyday Play in Squatter Community

NEPAL

Creating Time and Space for Play after an Earthquake

Leban0n

Play as Part of Emergency Response

T urkey

Urban Life for Roma Children in Istanbul

ISSUE 1:17 SEPTEMBER 2017

International Play Association Promoting the Child’s Right to Play

OFFICERS President Theresa Casey

Scotland Vice President Robyn Monro-Miller

Australia

COUNCIL (BRANCHES) Australia Barbara Champion Brazil Canada England, Wales, N. Ireland (EWNI) Germany

Janine Dodge Pierre Harrison Paul Hocker Holgar Hoffman

Secretary Margaret Westwood

Scotland

Hong Kong

Dr. C. B. Chow

Iran

Amin Gholami

Communications Cynthia Gentry

USA

Israel

Sheana Briazblatt

Japan

Yoko Kitagawa

Treasurer David Yearley

UK

Malaysia

Susie Ching Mey

Nepal

Madhur Sharma

Netherlands New Zealand

Development Kathy Wong Hong Kong

Russia Scotland

Membership Mike Greenaway Wales U N R E P R E S E N TAT I V E Roger Hart

Froukje Hajer Doug Cole Maria Sokolova Anne-Marie Mackin

Sweden

Christina Wahlund Nilsson

Turkey

Ayşe Pınar Gürer

USA

LaDonna Atkins

E D I TO R : GUEST EDITORS (APC SPECIAL ISSUE): Theresa

Cynthia Gentry (USA) Casey (Scotland), Sudeshna Chatterjee (India), Kathy Wong (Hong Kong )

Magazine feedback: We welcome your comments and suggestions at communications@ipaworld.org.

All inquiries regarding the reproduction of any material which appears in PlayRights for any purpose whatsoever should be directed in writing to the editor.

The views expressed in articles within PlayRights are those of the authors and not necessarily those of IPA. The publishers, authors and printers cannot accept liability for errors or omissions. © 2017 IPA

What the International Play Association is and how you can join International Play Association Promoting the Child’s Right to Play

IPA is a dynamic international organisation with members in five continents and more than 40 countries. It has active groups throughout the world and enthusiastically welcomes new members and new energy!

IPA’s purpose is to protect, preserve and promote the child’s right to play as a fundamental human right. The organisation was instrumental in establishing “play” (article 31) in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and in developing the general comment on article 31 for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

IPA recognises that the well-being of children is a global issue, and that opportunity for play is an important element of well-being.

Play is children’s natural behaviour and their healthy development is dependent upon sufficient time and opportunity to play.

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IPA is an interdisciplinary organisation bringing together people from all professions working for and with children. For over fifty years nat-ional groups have initiated a wide variety of projects that promote the child’s right to play.

IPA’s worldwide network promotes the importance of play in child development, provides a vehicle for interdisciplinary exchange and action and brings a child’s perspective to policy development throughout the world.

IPA welcomes you, or your organisation, to join its international network and participate in its campaign to promote the value of play around the world.

You can contact IPA through your national representative listed on our website. Visit ipaworld.org, or email the IPA Membership Officer at membership@ipaworld.org.

Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s

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28 Cover photo: Steve McCurry

For further information on IPA’s Access to Play in Crisis project including case studies, reports, and more, please visit IPAworld.org

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER LETTER FROM THE GUEST EDITORS WHY PLAY MATTERS IN CRISIS APC PROJECT SYNTHESIS REPORT

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JAPAN THAILAND INDIA NEPAL LEBANON TURKEY

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TOOLKIT Access to Play for Children in Situations of Crisis – A toolkit for staff, managers and policy makers.

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IN MEMORIUM

Remembering Stuart Lester.

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IPA ORGANISATIONAL NEWS

SEPTEMBER 2017

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Letter

from the

President

As I sat facing the massed ranks of IPA members when I was elected to the Board in 2008, I couldn’t have guessed what lay ahead. If I had, I might have felt a little more daunted, but the immediate problem was chairing a General Meeting of unruly IPA members with the rulebook at their elbows. I survived that baptism of fire – just – to be released to our post-GM dinner afloat in Hong Kong harbour.

I admit chairing a GM would never become my favourite Presidential task, but with two more under my belt and a Special General Meeting in Karlstad besides, they have given me a strong sense of the passion IPA members have for children’s play and the care you bring for IPA as an association. The GMs are held within the IPA World Conferences, where in Cardiff in 2011 we celebrated the historic 50th anniversary of IPA and in Istanbul in 2014 we saw the birth of Access to Play in Crisis (APC) and the approval of a record number of new IPA Branches.

Theresa Casey IPA President (2008-2017)

It has been such a privilege to work the partners in Wales, Turkey and now in Canada on the IPA Triennial World Conferences. Each was and is a remarkable event coloured by the culture and context of the host country and by the special qualities of an IPA conference, unique in the way we share, play and dream together.

While the World Conferences are our high profile and visible events, between times the IPA Board and Council work continuously towards the IPA purpose of protecting, preserving and promoting the child’s right to play as a fundamental human right. Our dearly missed colleague Valerie Fronczek coined this phrase for IPA and was an astonishing and inspiring - though at times exhausting! - Board colleague.

Her vision set the path towards the General Comment on article 31 published by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2013.

This is a legacy for children’s right to play of which the Board and IPA can be rightly proud.

While we had some wonderful and unusually glamourous occasions - the Golden Ball in Cardiff and the launch of the General Comment in swish lakeside surroundings in Geneva - others were a little less glitzy. Who knew that much of the IPA constitution was drafted in the back of a bus in South Africa? Strategic plans refined while stuck in traffic jams over the Bospherus, the ‘sweetie paper’ concluded in a spare hotel room in Edinburgh?

It has been a huge privilege to be part of all of this. And, it has been fun! As I step down from the Board after nine years, I am enormously grateful for the whole roller coaster ride that we’ve been on together.

I know that IPA has achieved what it has over the last decade or so because Board members have worked quietly and consistently in the background, partners have stepped up, and IPA members all over the world have put in time and effort. All of this has been undertaken purely to support the vision for children’s play that IPA holds and nurtures because we all know it matters. We stand up for children’s right to play - for if not us, who?

My warmest wishes to our incoming President (thank goodness you will take over chairing the GMs!), to the new and continuing Board and the Representatives of our growing body of Branches around the world.

Theresa 4

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Letter from the

Guest Editors

For the last two years IPA has been immersed in the theme of Access to Play in Crisis (APC). Emerging are windows on the worlds of children that leave us lost in admiration of their ingenuity and resilience, and simultaneously aghast at the circumstances in which they play. As we conclude the first two years of APC projects, this special issue of PlayRights opens the shutters and lets in some light on play in the lives of children, even when those are lives of everyday crisis.

This issue aims to gives you a glimpse of what our researchers found when they spent time with children and families in six diverse locations, trying together to understand the mechanisms through which children exercise their right to play. The IPA research partners, located in Thailand, Nepal, India, Turkey, Lebanon and Japan, have between them have produced a rich body of information.

Our findings challenge preconceptions of risk (the railway line in one study is a comparative safe place to play as the dangers are predictable and learned compared to the unpredictable dangers of the river), where there is or isn’t opportunity to play (‘sneaking’ the chance to play appears to be pretty universal coping mechanism), what makes a ‘good’ environment for play (children in one of the studies are growing up in the worst living conditions in Kolkata but are agile, inventive, and happy – their only complaint is that a local park is barred to them due to discrimination).

Despite this, structural barriers to health, education, housing and employment rights are still conspire to defeat the resilience built and expressed through play. Critically, the studies force us to ask how the play ‘capital’ built by the children themselves can be maintained rather than eroded by such barriers and even by interventions and regeneration projects designed to improve matters.

To implement children’s right to play in situations of crisis, a major challenge is to expand the view point of agencies and funders of programmes /projects to include an understanding of the importance of play and link this to the Sustainable Development Goals particularly: health and wellbeing, quality education and sustainable cities and communities.

IPA believes it has taken a useful first step but we are now even more conscious of the need for a ladder of actions leading to policy and programmatic change.

There are two significant and stubborn challenges – 1) the varying levels of understanding of the importance of play in children’s lives and very different interpretations of what we mean by play (IPA uses the UN Committee on the Right of the Child definition, GC17, 2013) and 2) the prevailing trend to accept de facto the greater importance of adultorganised recreational and educational activities.

IPA does not suggest these are not of great value to children, however children’s own self-directed and freely chosen playing is vital to their mental and physical health, resilience, ability to cope, psychological healing and is, in itself, a form of self-protection which we must not overlook.

The Guest Editors for this issue of PlayRights Magazine are Theresa Casey (Scotland), Sudeshna Chatterjee (India) and Kathy Wong (Hong Kong); Cynthia Gentry (USA) is Editor.

PHOTO BY KAINOA LITTLE

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The Importance of Play

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has expressed a deep concern that in situations of conflict or disaster children’s right to play is often given lower priority than the provision of food, shelter and medicines. This is despite the fact that play is known to be crucial to children’s wellbeing, development, health and survival in these circumstances.

The CRC notes that in these crisis situations, playing: • has a significant therapeutic and rehabilitative role in helping children recover a sense of normality and joy after their experience of loss, dislocation and trauma • helps refugee children and children who have experienced bereavement, violence, abuse or exploitation, to overcome emotional pain and regain control over their lives • can restore a sense of identity, help them make meaning of what has happened to them, and enable them to experience fun and enjoyment • offers children an opportunity to engage in a shared experience, to re-build a sense of personal value and selfworth, to explore their own creativity and to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging. (Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2013: 17)

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Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the role of play in alleviating the harmful effects ACEs are stressful experiences occurring during childhood that directly harm a child (such as physical abuse or emotional trauma) or affect the environment in which they live (such as growing up among violence or experiencing a natural disaster).

It is widely agreed that early experiences influence how children learn, cope with stress, form friendships and adult relationships, and how they view themselves and their world.

Toxic stress is caused when there are prolonged and frequent events that are out of the child’s control. These can have harmful effects on the development of children’s brains as well as disrupting organ development and weakening the defence system against diseases. The more ACEs a child experiences, the greater the chance of health and other social problems later in life.

Even under persistent stressful conditions however, the negative consequences of toxic stress can be alleviated to varying degrees through access to play.

in Situations of Crisis Why IPA is focusing on access to play in crisis situations Playing generates concrete and first-hand experiences that support a child’s development. Play provision increases children’s ability to support their own wellbeing and aids adults in understanding children’s development. It supports children where opportunities to play are absent in the home.

Stable, nurturing relationships with caring adults can prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress.

Nurturing and play-friendly environments – or lack of them – affect the healthy development of children. An optimum play environment is flexible, adaptable, varied and interesting. It is a trusted space where children feel free to play in their own way, on their own terms. Children’s spaces should include chances for wonder, excitement and the unexpected and, most of all, opportunities that are not overly ordered and controlled by adults. These spaces are crucial to children’s own culture and for their sense of place and belonging.

Growing up with Adverse Childhood Experiences is likely to have a big impact on the physical, mental and emotional development of children. However, play can help to reverse the impacts of toxic stress and contribute to long-term improvements in children’s outcomes.

This requires: • responsive caregivers who understand the need for play • supportive communities where playing is tolerated and celebrated • policy programmes which provide play spaces and opportunities Extract from Access to Play for Children in Situations of Crisis Play: rights and practice A toolkit for staff, managers and policy makers, IPA 2017: 14)

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The IPA Access to Play in Crisis (APC) Project

A Synthesis Report of IPA’s research from around the world

BY SUDESHNA CHATTERJEE

The adoption of the General comment on Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC 1990) by the UN Committee in 2013 was a significant landmark for recognizing and realizing the right to play for all children, in all cultures, countries and circumstances. Within the General comment, the Committee drew attention to the play rights of children in difficult circumstances including children in situations of conflict, humanitarian and natural disasters.

In Istanbul, 2014, IPA held a Special Workshop within its Triennial World Conference. This workshop, ‘Access to Play in Crisis’, considered the principles, challenges and design of space for play for children in situations of conflict, humanitarian and natural disasters. The workshop also identified significant gaps in knowledge and understanding about the play needs of children in crisis situations and how those needs should be met.

Evidence shows that everyday opportunities for play are an essential component of physical, social, cognitive, emotional and spiritual development as well as a fundamental part of the pleasure of childhood. Children in situations of crisis have a heightened need for play in their everyday lives.

“Opportunities for play, recreation and cultural activity can play a significant therapeutic and rehabilitative role in helping children recover a sense of normality and joy after their experience of loss, dislocation and trauma.” (Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2013: 17)

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Globally profound disaster conditions – both natural and man-made – are on the rise precipitating situations of crisis of different scales and nature (see table 1 for a typology of crisis).

Between 2005 and 2014, ‘natural’ disasters affected an annual average of 168.5 million people (Lovell & Masson 2015). The extent of the impact of these natural hazards is typically directly proportional to people’s vulnerability to hazards and people’s capacity to cope (Wisner et al. 2014). Data compiled by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs show that 97 million people were affected by natural disasters in 2013 alone, the top five affected countries being China, Philippines, India, Vietnam and Thailand. In the same year 51.2 million people were affected by conflict (World Humanitarian Data and Trends 2014).

On the other hand, the Slum Almanac 2015-16 published by UN Habitat records one in eight people living in slums or over a billion people around the world living in slum like and oftenhazardous conditions in cities. Everyday hazards can have as great or sometimes greater impact on children’s lives over the long run than a one-time large-scale disaster. Big natural disasters can drive reform and the allocation of resources, leading to improvements in public safety (Lepore 2016). But the crisis of growing up in poverty in adequate living environments has no such power for driving policy change even though it not only threatens the individual child but entrenches and even exacerbates inequality in society (Ortiz et al. 2012).

APC Synthesis Report Adapted from: Bull-Kamanga, L. et al. (2003).

Nature of event

Large-scale natural and humanitarian disasters (e.g. tsunamis, earthquakes, typhoons, civil wars, genocide, international conflicts, drought)

Small disasters (e.g. seasonal flooding, storms, house fires, localized landslides, wildfire, epidemics)

Everyday hazards (e.g. unsafe, hazardous living environments; preventable disease, traffic)

Frequency

Typically, infrequent though common to some parts of the world

Frequent (seasonal)

Everyday

Scale

Large or potential to be large and life threatening

Medium

Medium in inadequate living environments

Impact on children

Can be catastrophic, violating basic rights of the child

Significant but under-estimated contribution to children’s ill-health, injuries, loss of well-being.

Significant and mostly ignored contributor to creating unfavourable living environments for children.

Risks

Intensive risks

Extensive risks

Extensive risks in some places and times

Article 31 of the UNCRC recognizes the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts. It outlines the commitment of duty-bearers to respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and to encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed a deep concern, shared by IPA, that in situations of conflict or disaster the child’s rights to play are often given lower priority than the provision of food, shelter and medicines. A literature review on access to play in situations of crisis by IPA has identified significant gaps in knowledge and understanding about the play needs of children in crisis situations, and how those needs should be met. The academic as well as development literature documents play (in a broad sense) in crisis situations as embedded in intervention programming. Although children consistently remark about play, play spaces and their need for play, evidence of how agencies (NGOs, government agencies, UN agencies etc.) respond to those needs in situations of crisis is difficult to find.

PHOTO BY DANIEL LIN

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APC Synthesis Report Research Objectives The Access to Play in Crisis research has the following key objectives: • To understand the play needs and rights of children in situations of crisis from children’s and adult perspectives • To explore current policies and practices that support play in different crisis contexts and understand what constraints play • To understand to what extent agencies actively involve children so that they can inform the development of programs intended to promote play • To understand how children themselves create opportunities for play in situations of crisis and how that intersects with the discourses of vulnerability and protection on one hand and resilience on the other • To understand the dynamics between free play by children undertaken for its own sake and organizational mandates where play is often a means to an end (e.g. an icebreaking activity before a workshop) within programmatic activities Main research questions • How does crisis affect children’s right to play in everyday life?

• How do children cope?

• What is the role of adults and community development organizations in promoting the right to play in situations of crisis?

• What importance do children’s organizations, working on humanitarian and disaster risk reduction, place on children’s play rights in the context of their work/programs?

• What are the lessons for promoting the right to play in situations of crisis?

Methodology The research used mostly qualitative methods for observing and understanding children’s play in crisis situations by directly working with children and other community members. For this purpose six child friendly tools were adapted from existing toolkits that were recommended by the expert panel of this research. These tools had

been tried and tested for engaging children in research in situations of crisis elsewhere (University of Brighton 2014, and Save the Children Norway 2008). To understand organizational work with children, perceptions of parents, adults in the community, organization staff and government stakeholders, individual interviews and focus group discussions were conducted. The child friendly tools include: 1. The Body Map: A participatory tool which helps to record diverse experiences of children. The body image (and body parts) is used as a focus to explore and record participant’s views regarding the different ways in which living in a situation of crisis has affected their lives.

2. Risk Mapping: A participatory tool that enables children and young people to explore the risks they face in their local communities; identify factors in their local communities, in a situation of crisis, that challenge play, while also identifying the risks they most want to reduce.

3. Group Child-led Tours: The researcher asks to be shown around and to hear about play places or place-related play events that are familiar to children based on their own experiences. This method enables in situ assessments of play spaces in their local environment or an indoor institutional setting by children and adolescents.

4. Child-led Demonstrations of Play Experiences in a Simulated Environment: This tool is useful when it may not be possible to have children to lead the researcher through the environment because they are too heavily used by others at all times, or because the children would feel uncomfortable showing and speaking while others are watching. This tool maybe especially useful for describing play experiences in an unsafe place that children frequent (with or without permission) and engage in different forms of play.

5. Conversational Interviews with Children using a Prop: This method is particularly useful if the researcher wants to interview children including younger ones on play experiences with a view to understanding different forms of coping. The method enables children to engage in conversations with adults in a play-based way.

6. The Flower Map: A simple visual tool to explore which people provide support to children and young people’s play.

L LIN

PHOTO BY DANIE

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APC Synthesis Report Research Context The APC research was conducted in six different countries spread across Asia and the Middle East and engaged with a diverse range of situations of crisis. Using the categorization presented in Table 1 and refining it further based on our chosen contexts, the research projects are introduced below: Crisis

Natural disaster

Humanitarian crisis

Everyday crisis

APC research context

Japan

Nepal

Turkey

Lebanon

India

Thailand

Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, with a magnitude 9.0, followed by a tsunami that triggered a crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This was a unique triple disaster never experienced anywhere else in the world.

The massive Gorkha Earthquake on April 25, 2015 in Nepal with a magnitude 7.8 followed by landslides in the Himalayas and aftershocks for days.

Turkey houses the largest Roma population (2.7 million) in a European country. Yet the Roma live in poverty and exclusion over many generations with limited or no access to education, employment, health services or proper housing. Recent policies are further discriminating against the Roma.

Protracted crisis of Syrian refugees seeking refuge in Lebanon since 2011.

More than 2 million Syrian refugees are living in 5000+ Informal Tented Settlements (ITSs) spread across Lebanon.

Slums are the de facto housing for the poor in Indian cities; earlier migrants live in legally recognized settlements whereas the later migrants live in illegal squatter settlements in hazardous locations without any legal access to basic services or social security.

Thailand has become a destination country for economic migration from neighbouring countries, particularly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. There are currently an estimated 3.25 million legal and illegal migrants living here.

Location of research sites

Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture.

Bhumlutar village in Kavre district and Kunchowk village in Sindupalchowk district.

Three Roma majority neighborhoods of Sulukule, Tarlabasi and Kustepe in Istanbul.

ITSs in Bekaa, Beirut, and North

Nimtala Ghat squatter settlement along a railway track in Kolkata.

Two urban sites near Bangkok and one rural site near Burma border housing Burmese and Cambodian migrants.

Impact of crisis

19,533 lives were lost.

Ishinomaki city in Miyagi Prefecture, was severely affected: 3541 people died and 427 people are still missing.

The earthquake triggered a tsunami that devastated the coastal areas.

The sea wall to the Fukushima nuclear power plant failed and many people were evacuated from the area.

Both the selected districts were severely impacted with massive loss of life (3438 in Sindupalchowk and 318 in Kavre) and property (113818 houses fully damaged in both districts).

In Kavre, 548 government schools were damaged and 557 in Sindupalchowk.

As Nepal is a small and poor country, the earthquake undid many developmental gains made over the years.

Recent government policies are targeting centuries old Roma neighbourhoods for ‘urban regeneration’.

People are alienated, victimized and displaced for gentrification.

Already a marginalized and disenfranchised minority group, the Roma people are uncertain and fearful about the future.

Syrian refugees today represent almost a quarter of Lebanon’s population.

This is putting a great strain on Lebanon’s economy and society. The increasing poverty, food shortage and general insecurity have escalated tensions between Syrian refugees and local Lebanese citizens.

For an illegal resident living in poverty in an extremely hazardous environment every day is a crisis.

Poverty is passed on to successive generations as a direct consequence of lack of opportunities for education, skills and vocational training with access to only the lowest paid unskilled and semi-skilled work.

Even though Thai law protects migrant workers, foreign migrant workers are in fact not protected or treated equally. There is widespread ethnic/race discrimination and marginalisation against migrant workers in Thailand who work for longer hours and live in unhealthy and hazardous environments, often oppressed, threatened or reported to the police. Many migrant children born in Thailand are stateless as their births are not registered.

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japan CHILDREN’S RIGHT TO AND SUPPORT FOR

PLAY IN POST DISASTER JAPANESE CONTEXT

BY HELEN WOOLLEY AND ISAMI KINOSHITA

J

apan experiences 20 per cent of the world’s earthquakes and on 11 March 2011 suffered a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami causing widespread death and destruction along the eastern coastal areas, and triggering the failure of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The nuclear meltdown was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The first tsunami wave reached the coast 15 minutes after the earthquake. The waves were larger than had been expected or planned for, reaching 38 metres, the height of a 12-storey building, in some locations. A continuous stretch of land more than 500 km in length and sometimes 4 km wide was directly affected and the volume of water made an unexpected impact as it travelled up the narrow river valleys. This was a unique triple disaster of massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant failure never experienced before anywhere in the world. The widespread damage has been referred to as the worst natural disaster in Japan’s recorded history, but affected a low-density population in this coastal and rural area. However, entire towns were washed away by the tsunami, reducing some communities to less than half of their pre-tsunami populations (WPRO/WHO, 2012). There was a high death toll of 19,533 people, many missing people, and displacement of families resulting in trauma, shock, grief and isolation. There was a massive loss of property resulting in 26.7 million tons of debris with a very high rebuilding cost.

Risks to children Children experienced a ‘cascading series of life stressors’ (Weissbecker et al., 2008 p. 32) including loss of family, relatives, friends, homes, neighbourhoods and play opportunities; loss of school days and destruction and damage of schools. There is now also evidence of long term health implications. Before the disaster, there were only one to two cases of thyroid cancers in a million Japanese children but now Fukushima has more than 100 confirmed or suspected cases, having tested about 300,000

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children1. In addition there is an increased suicide risk among young children, particularly girls, who experienced the trauma of earthquake at preschool age2; higher PTSD risk in regions with radiation-related impacts than in regions where the main damage was caused by the earthquake and tsunami3, behaviour problems and other mental health issues4. Many children who were evacuated to other areas across Japan had to move several times and some were separated from their families. Such children had difficulty making friends and often suffered at the hands of bullies who accused them of spreading nuclear radiation in the school.

Right to play Following visits to the post-disaster area in 2012 and 2014 we suggested a framework of Space, People, Intervention and Time that supported children’s right to play5. Examples were provided of where this had happened and also where these dimensions were limiting or restricting children’s right to play (Woolley and Kinoshita, 2015).

The research reported here builds on that previous work and was undertaken six years after the disaster as part of the IPA’s Children’s Access to Play in Crisis situations. The current research was undertaken in Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture which was severely affected by the triple disaster and where 3,541 people died and 427 people are still missing. It explored the memory of experiences of a small number of children at different stages after the disaster: in emergency shelter/accommodation, in temporary housing and in new housing.

Evacuation stage: until six months after the disaster Immediately after the disaster people were evacuated to shelters and emergency evacuation locations such as school gymnastic halls or school shelters and these were very crowded spaces. The atmosphere was very sad and children played quietly indoors.

Some shelters were visited by volunteers to support children’s play so some of children were then able to have a different experience supported by the volunteers.

japan For the children whose houses were safe after the tsunami, the sad atmosphere restricted their free play outdoors. In these areas the landscape after the disaster was enough to limit children’s play because of the mass of debris resulting from the disaster. However, one child reported that they would hit the debris with a stick as a way to deal with their stress and said it was ‘allowing their stress to explode’.

Temporary Housing stage: six months after the disaster until moving to current housing Once moved from the evacuation centre children moved to one of three types of living accommodation.

Some children moved to live at a relative’s house and these children had no friends around the new location so they tended to play at home. Others moved to public temporary housing and in these locations there were no places for play around the temporary houses. Finally, some children returned to their original home directly from the evacuation shelter if their houses were safe or only slightly damaged. These children stated that part of the park where they used to play was occupied by temporary housing and they could not play there anymore.

Children who were told that they were not to play outdoors stayed indoors and played video games. However, some tried to seek out secret places such as under the bridge where they enjoyed catching fish in the river and cherished the riverside as a place to have contact with nature. The 6th grade children liked to explore different places where they could play, even though this act of seeking out new places was secret from their parents. The process of finding new play spaces with friends became an adventure.

New housing: public house apartment or new house, from temporary housing stage until present In the 6 years since the disaster, in order to play children have been mainly staying at home and using other indoor commercial facilities such as a shopping centres, game centres, Karaoke, and other places, partly because these were soon rebuilt. This kind of behaviour might also have happened before the disaster, but then the children had other choices of where they could spend time such as in parks and hanging out on the streets.

Space Most of the children reported that they lost spaces where they previously played before the disaster, and stayed indoors playing video games every day. There were three reasons limiting the space for play meaning that they had no other way but to be indoors to play those games. First the disaster itself destroyed spaces where the children used to play; second, parks and schoolyards which

were not destroyed became dominated by construction work for building temporary houses; third, the surroundings of the temporary houses were covered in tarmac and occupied in many locations by extensive tarmac areas for parked cars.

There were also social reasons restricting children’s use of spaces. First, many children had a loss of friends because they were in temporary and other housing provision in different locations. Second, in the early stages at the evacuation centre, the atmosphere of sadness and shock being experienced by the adults was very great. Third, in the areas affected by the nuclear disaster children could not play outdoors, even after decontamination was completed. In these areas children were told by parents not to play outdoors, not to touch leaves, etc.

Time The current culture in Japan for children is very much focussed on education and this has reduced children’s time for play because of school and after school programmes. In the post disaster situation time was increasingly a constraint on play for some children because of the need to travel, sometimes long distances, on buses to and from temporary accommodation (Woolley and Kinoshita, 2014). However, for some time was not the problem, the greater difficulty was finding friends to play with around their temporary, new or existing living area.

Other reasons limiting play Most of the children said that, the stressful atmosphere meant that adults told them not to play or they spontaneously refrained from playing outdoors in the prevalent atmosphere of loss and despair. In the evacuation centres children had to be patient with the inconvenient and difficult situation of having no privacy and living together with a lot of people in a high density space. If children were playing around the temporary houses, children were told not to play by adults. This was because the residents wanted to live quietly, because the structure of the temporary houses did not have good soundproofing and the residents were stressed by noise.

Some children stayed at home for psychological issues. The 10-12 year old girls who saw many dead bodies at the time of the tsunami experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it took a long time for them to overcome the experience. One girl admitted that she did not go out to play because she had withdrawn into herself. The social worker who has been supporting them through play work, reported that the children could only talk about their experiences recently: that is 6 years after the disaster.

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Supporting children’s right to play A range of Interventions and People (Woolley and Lowe, 2015) supported opportunities for children’s play including mobile play cars full of building blocks, crayons and other play props, the development of a children’s centre, adventure playgrounds and a series of ongoing activities in the years since the triple disaster.

Mobile play support The NPO ‘Rainbow Color Crayon’ provided mobile play opportunities using a play car in evacuation centres and then at the temporary housing sites. This NPO visited one or two of the 134 temporary sites a day, although there were too many sites in Ishinoamki city for them to cover them all. The children anticipated the weekly visits and appreciated them very much and had good memories of those play activities. The founder of Rainbow Color Crayon explained that, at first, the adults did not understand the importance of play for children. However, when the adults saw that the ‘children recovered their smile through play activities’ facilitated by different organizations, they could understand the importance of play for children and some of the adults even started supporting the play activities.

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Children’s ‘Rights’ Centre In Ishinomaki city Save the Children Japan worked to build a Children’s Center called ‘Rights’ using a participatory process with the children and using a financial donation from a big whisky company. The children who were interviewed said that they wanted to have other places like the ‘Rights’ centre where children can gather for free. Before this centre existed some of the children were isolated or withdrawn. The centre enabled children to make friends for the first time after the disaster and the children not only appreciated the physical building but also the role of the staff. The staff took a reflective approach to their practice, observing the children and reporting that initially they moved harshly, without clear objectives, rather than playing something specific. Over time this changed. The staff observed the children in detail and cuddled close with them as long as possible. This reflexive practice enabled the staff to understand the mental condition of the children post disaster and adjust their ways of engaging with these children.

japan Adventure playgrounds Adventure Playgrounds also made an important contribution to supporting children’s play. There are eight adventure playgrounds in Ishinomaki City and most of these were functioning after the disaster, although at a much reduced frequency of once a month (Kinoshita & Woolley 2015). The Japanese Adventure Playground Association supported local volunteer groups to set up temporary pop-up playgrounds. They also built other adventure playgrounds and trained playworkers to support these playgrounds in disaster affected areas. One such example is the Adventure playground Asobi-ba in Kesenuma City where a big slide had been made with tsunami play in mind. Children self-initiated and organised tsunami play by flushing water from the top of the slide. However, whenever any child found the game scary and distressing, the playworkers stopped the game. But one playworker recollected the following play experiences of children: “Tsunami play was seen often at Asobi-ba. With a handmade slide, a child gliding from the top plays the part of the tsunami.

A child standing below is drenched, and may die or not, and at the side another child is positioned for announcing a major tsunami warning. They all survived on this occasion.”

Ongoing activities In the years since the disaster NPOs for children now organise a network to encourage, support and enable Ishinomaki to become a Child Friendly City. Through collaboration in organising activities with each other, the NPOs have raised the consciousness of the city to grow the network for children to make the local government become a more child friendly city.

Three new play provisions and activities were promoted. First, the rebuilding the Kamegamori-adventure playground near the temporary housing at the Nogawa River which houses a lot of displaced people in crowded quarters. Second, a two-day festival called Mini City Ishinomaki was organized. The event became

bigger and bigger as people heard about it and eventually more than two thousand children participated during the two day period. The third approach was Hack’s House where a garden of a house was changed and improved to allow for abundant play.

Importance of play in humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction work The people supporting children’s opportunities for play included large international organisations, smaller NPOs, commercial organisations, individuals and as time has gone by city authorities. International organisations included Save the Children and UNICEF; national organisations included Japan Adventure Playground Association, Children’s Theatres, the Good Toy Committee and the National Toy Library Association. NPOs included Rainbow Color Crayon and individuals included play workers who travelled, or moved from one part of the country to another to support this work.

Because play organizations became involved at the first stage of the disaster response and rebuilding planning, international organizations and donors were open to integrate the right to play in aspects of the development program although they were not able to reach all children affected by the disaster.

To some extent this reflects the suggestions of the Sendai Framework7 that different levels and types of organisations should be involved in Disaster Risk Reduction. The full extent of how this support is provided needs further research.

However, we do know that the children themselves stated three things needed in such a post disaster situation. First, the children said adults should understand the importance of play, especially after a disaster when children are particularly stressed.

Second, it is important that there be a gathering place where children can meet others, make friends and play safely. Third, the children said it is important that mobile play opportunities at temporary housing sites are provided.

References 1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-11/fukushima-radiation-levels-high-four-years-after-disaster/6297718 2. Fujiwara T, Yagi J, Homma H, Mashiko H, Nagao K, Okuyama M; Great East Japan Earthquake Follow-up for Children Study Team. (2017). Suicide risk among young children after the Great East Japan Earthquake: A follow-up study. Psychiatry Res. 2017 Jul;253:318-324. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2017.04.018.

Epub 2017 Apr 9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28412615 3. Matsumoto K, Sakuma A, Ueda I, Nagao A, Takahashi Y. (2016). Psychological trauma after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci.

2016 Aug;70(8):318-31. doi: 10.1111/pcn.12403. Epub 2016 Jun 28.

4. Weissbecker I, Sephton SE, Meagan BM, Simpson DM. 2008. Psychological and physiological correlates of stress in children exposed to disaster: current research and recommendations for intervention. Children, Youth and Environments 18: 31–70. Available at http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye 5. Woolley, H. and Kinoshita, I. (2015) Space, People, Interventions and Time (SPIT): A Model for Understanding Children’s Outdoor Play in Post-Disaster Contexts Based on a Case Study from the Triple Disaster Area of Tohoku in North-East Japan. Children and Society, 29: 434-450 DOI:10.1111/chso.12072 6. Kinoshita, I. and Woolley, H. (2015) Children’s Play Environment after a Disaster: The Great East Japan Earthquake, Children 2: 36-62. doi:10.3390/ children2010039 7. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015) Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 http://www.unisdr.org/we/ coordinate/sendai-framework [Accessed 25.7.17}

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RIGHT TO PLAY OF CHILDREN IN MIGRANT WORKERS’ COMMUNITIES IN THAILAND IN AMPHOE MUANG, AMPHOE PHRA PADAENG, SAMUT PRAKARN PROVINCE, AND AMPHOE MAE SOT, TAK PROVINCE, THAILAND

BY KHEMPORN WIRUNRAPAN, PRASOPSUK BORANMOOL, KRONGKAEW CHAIARKHOM, SRIBUA KANTHAWONG

The past 30 years saw flows of neighbouring nationals migrating into Thailand from Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR to seek paid employment. Some of the migrants came through legal channels; others have been smuggled in; some of them are victims of trafficking. Migrants create living quarters and many came with their children. While many children of migrants are born on Thai soil, these children live their whole lives in crisis as some of them do not possess nationality papers resulting in profound problems of statelessness, lack of access to education, health care and safe environments. Their basic right to play, among others, is deprived.

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thailand This study covered three target areas: one in Mae Sot (Tak Province) and two in Samut Prakarn Province (Tai Ban in Muang district and Samrong in Phra Padaeng district). In this article, the research team shares findings on the patterns of play found amongst children in these communities. They were observed to use general and special coping mechanisms to meet their need to play.

Play is important in the view of children. They told the research team that they have fun and happiness with play.

Play makes them healthy and strong. Play helps them in their growth, makes them friendly, open and free. Around their living quarters children want to have a large space, access to nature, friends to play with, happiness, and freedom to learn.

When we play, we are happy and we enjoy ourselves.

(Children aged 6-10) If we enjoy playing, we will enjoy studying, too. Playing is as important as studying. (10 year-old, Tak province) The play of children in three study areas was found to be limited, however, and full of obstacles and challenges. The groups having the least chance to play are: • children under six years of age who have to accompany their parents to work or are locked up at home while parents are at work • child labourers who have to work hard for long hours and have little time to play or are too tired to play • girl child labourers have to tend to domestic chores; social norms force the girls to become adults more quickly than boys, thus no time to play • some children with disabilities are kept at home because of shame • married girls are expected to behave like adults so they cannot play • children whose parents expect good school performance from them are under pressure and have less time to play.

Obstacles and challenges to children’s access to play include: • parents not allowing children to play far from home or outside of home (reasons include not feeling safe because they did not have legal documents for immigration, they could not speak Thai) • risk of abduction

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physical areas and environment that are unsafe causing drowning, car accident, poisoned by venom animals (snakes, centipedes or scorpions) unhygienic living quarters with standing water, chemicals, trash etc, working children have less time to play early marriages and teen parents taking away the childhood.

Against all odds, migrant children have ways to cope and play in every day crisis situations.

General coping mechanisms include children sneaking out to play in places prohibited by adults - children can do this very well since their parents are often not around.

Most children are aware of unsafe places because the places are strictly prohibited by adults. However, the prohibited places are the places they like to go most. It is challenging and exciting to explore so they will secretly go there often. Those places are often places with water, for example, river, river banks, ponds, canals, waterways or waste water pipes.

My children loved to sneak out playing at the dock. No matter how many times I say no or how hard I punish them, they will go anyway. I don’t know what to do. When I asked them, they will change the subjects. I don’t have time to look after them because I have to work.

(One mother) When I played near the (deep water) basin and caught frogs, I was cut by a broken glass because there are plenty of them embedded in the sand.

(A boy age 11) It is a lot of fun to play at the deserted salt factory. We chase one another and climb on the salt bags. If adults approach, we would hide. When they leave, we will start doing it again.

(A boy in Saphan Pla age 7) For child labourers who have to work, they have less time to play so they secretly play while working in a factory when their employer is not around.

I secretly drum plastic buckets when the boss is not around.

These plastic buckets are produced in the factory. I also secretly eat some snacks.

(A boy aged 17, Saphan Pla Community)

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thailand Otherwise, children accept the limitation and play only at home or with whatever toys or objects they can put their hands on or with what is allowed.

I have to help my parents doing housework, getting water, washing clothes and cooking before I can play so when I come back from school, I will finish my housework as fast as I can so I can have more time to play. (A child in Mae Sot age 10) “Forced to be home, they invented toys from bamboo found in the community. Out of the bamboo, they made piggy banks or human-size wooden shoes. They used bamboo for their cooking games such as making French fries or other simple meals, using real kitchen utensils. In this way, they learned how to cook real food. In case when their parents are not home, they would look after their little siblings and played with them at home.”

Children turn to technology such as watching television, becoming absorbed in smart phones or playing computer games at a game shop.

In the parents’ view gadgets such as smart phones help to keep their children home where they felt they were safer. They bought them smart phones and could keep in touch with their children when they left them on their own to go to work. The parents believed their children would be saved from danger in this way. They call the children regularly to check what their children are doing and if they are safe.

Children also have special coping mechanisms which include improvised play and improvised musical instruments, increasing risks in play thus increasing fun such as using fantasies or risky types of play.

“There were areas in the community where children were restricted to enter and to play. However, the more they were prohibited, the more they wanted to play in those restricted areas.

They would sneak into places such as construction sites. They would climb into a wood warehouse. They would jump into delivery trucks in the parking lot. When adults approached they would run away for a while and come back to play soon after.

When children played in areas that were dangerous and prohibited or when they had no other choice, they would create play formats such that they changed hazardous areas into a fun place.

For example, they would imagine the areas to be an adventure park where they ran away from beasts or where they fought as warriors.”

(Extract from Case Study, sand port, Samut Prakan Province)

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The risky play was observed to fall into two patterns: • Actual risky play and increasing the risk in play using imagination. This applies mostly to boys but some girls do play in this way. There were playing places where children liked to go such as river bank or deserted building. These places were prohibited by their parents but there were no other places else to play so children looked for a less risky place and imagined it to be more dangerous, for example, climbing into a truck bed in parking lot.

• Imagination play. It gave risky and thrilled feeling, for example, playing which is related to ghost or spirit like Spirit Board that children saw on television programmes and played it often. The questions these children asked would be related to their fear of any accidents in the community and what their parents were worried.

Sample Ghost Play A child lies down in the middle, surrounded by his friends. He pretends to be taken by a ghost. His friends try to communicate with the ghost by asking the child the following questions.

Q: Who are you?

A: My name is…

Q: How did you die?

A: I was hit by a car (or I drowned, etc.)

Q: Will you haunt us?

A: Yes. Everyone would run away. Or if the answer is no, children would keep asking.

Lessons from the Thailand study promoting right to play The research found that safe play spaces are an important issue for communities where high-risk factors are present. Play space should be creatively designed so that they respond to the play needs of children of all ages and social status. Play could serve as therapy for children with limited access to play.

Parents must give more importance to play and could form groups of volunteers which function as a family network to resolve or prevent problems of children playing in hazardous and dangerous conditions. Furthermore, appropriate play and access to such play should be created for girls or teen mothers so that they could find their own freedom and realize their full potential.

It may be possible to identify empowered migrant communities that have good management; and, in such communities, outside organizations could lend support to community members and promote access to play for their children.

thailand It has been observed that children’s access to play is increased in school but teachers have to be skilful in organizing play for children. If employers see the importance of play and provide play space in migrant communities, it would help increase an access to play for children.

Community child care centres could be a magnet for local government agencies such as municipality and public health offices, to come and support. Various children organizations have policies and funding sources that are not accommodating the work to promote children’s access to play. Both factors have contributed to the work being interrupted and to the inability of the players to scale up the initiative.

Last but not least, promotion of cultural space in the community could help migrant workers to see the potential and

possibilities to integrate play space as part of their livelihoods.

These cultural spaces should be aligned with their way of living and that promote their sense of self-worth and dignity, as well as their true participation.

As for policy recommendations, the team conclude from this research that Thailand should have a clear policy regarding support for migrant persons under 18 years old. Such care provision should be age appropriate and service providers should define clear policies and roles. The right to play of migrant children should form part of the policy towards migrant workers in Thailand. It could be integrated in the well-defined education and public health structure. Furthermore, the right to play should be one of the topics to be highlighted in Thailand’s report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Study details The study was conducted through literature review (which revealed a lack of study in this area) and in-depth interviews with 97 children (47 girls and 50 boys) in three age groups 6- 10, 11 – 14 and 15 – 18 years old. IPA data collection tools were used in the field research. In addition, the study used other methods such as field visits to observe children’s play, interviews with parents, and interviews with community volunteers, government officials and children organizations’ workers. The duration of field work was three months from December 2016 to February 2017.

The field research reveals that crisis in labour migration, insecurity in migrant workers’ lives and hard work to make ends meet have resulted in the lack of time for parents to look after their children and the children’s opportunities to play. Most workers live in crowded and unhealthy conditions. Many of them lack legal status and are illegal migrants. Due to these factors, parents often prohibit children to play outside of home or of community. They do not gather in groups to do any activity and fear of attracting the attention of authorities (police) is a large issue. They avoid having any conflict with Thai people. As results, parents block the chance of children to experience a great variety of play.

RESEARCHERS AND SUPPORT TEAMS Senior Researcher Khemporn Wirunrapan - Child and Youth Media Foundation (CYMF) Researchers -Foundation for Child Development (FCD) Prasopsuk Boranmool Krongkaew Chaiarkhom Sribua Kanthawong Field data collecting team Weerapong Kangwannavakun Pattamawan Phutbuanoy Chanta Tang

Burmese interpreters Su Htet Lwin Nan Pawk Mai Max Hnin Hgwe Zin Translators Tanyakorn Feichtinger Kusumal Rachawong Narumol Ruenwai Chongcharoen Sornkaew Varoonvarn Svangsopakul Chitraporn Vanaspong

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Access to Play in Crisis Research KOLKATA, INDIA

BY SUDESHNA CHATTERJEE AND SHALINI GUPTA

The Context: A railway track curves its way through a settlement of crude huts made from salvaged rubbish. The huts are barely three feet away from the track on either side. About 26 trains run on this single track in both directions between 8:00 and 21:00 hours everyday. An air horn is blown to signal the arrival of a train, but it does not indicate the direction of an incoming train and nor is this audible signal sounded without fail every time. To make things worse, a bend to the north of the track along the squatters makes the train invisible till it suddenly appears.

18 girls and 22 boys (all between 6 and 14 years of age). All the participants lived in the squatters along the railway tracks. Out of the 40 children, 32 attended school. The study took place over the winter months from December 2016 to February 2017. Six researchers from two different local organizations, Earth Care and Jhalapala, engaged with children in their everyday settings, observing them at play, going on child-led walks and finally conducting workshops with the children using the child friendly tools specially designed for this project to understand how children cope and make sense of the world through play.

People sit in front of their huts and carry out the business of living from cooking and studying to socializing and fighting. Small children play in front of the huts or on the track between trains as they are not allowed to go far, parents feel children are safer playing near home than beyond where they cannot keep an eye on them. In fact, parents start acclimatizing their children to the harsh environment from a young age; infants are laid down with their heads on the track to feel the vibration of train movements so that they know in their blood when to get out of harm’s way.

Nimtola Ghat squatter residents live in an extremely hazardous environment without any security of tenure and in abject poverty.

Deemed illegal, the present population are the third or fourth generation descendants of migrants who came to Kolkata, the most important city in eastern India, in search of work from the neighbouring states of Bihar and Jharkhand. Adult males work as cleaners, porters or cycle van drivers and females work as domestic help in nearby neighbourhoods. Slums are the de facto housing for the poor in Kolkata, however migrants who came to the city earlier, live in legally recognized settlements whereas the later migrants, who came during the 1970s or later, live in illegal squatter settlements that mushroomed on vacant land in the margins of

This is the Nimtola Ghat squatter settlement in Kolkata, India where the Access to Play in Crisis research was conducted with 20

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india city infrastructure along the railway tracks, canals etc. With the extreme pressure on land and municipal services, these squatter settlements are unlikely to be regularized by the city corporation.

Some families have the financial means to move to a proper room in a regularized slum with municipal services. Yet they continue to stay in the squatters mainly because living here is free and the area of work is right next to the settlement. More importantly as most of the families belong to the lower castes, mainly “Doms”, the caste that attend to funeral duties and are typically treated as untouchables by higher caste Hindus, the families in Nimtola Ghat stayed put here to be among the same caste and not risk discrimination and prejudice in regularized slums which will have a greater mix of people from different backgrounds.

According to Census of India, 2011, total number of slums in Kolkata city is 300,755 with a population of 1,409,721, which is about 31.35% of Kolkata’s population. Though not all slums are the same, the scale of everyday crisis in illegal (unregularized) slums across India, puts over a million children at risk everyday from hazardous living conditions. The many deprivations these children face, and the lack of opportunities for education or skill development, make it especially hard for them to break the cycle of poverty in their lifetime, which further entrenches and even exacerbates inequality in society.

Crematorium and the surrounding area: Nimtala Ghat is a famous crematorium next to the squatters and the area gets its name from it. Many people in the area are connected to the various industries that service the crematorium and the Hindu rituals associated with death. This area has century old temples and ghats (a wide set of steps descending to a river for bathing and worship), warehouses, launch jetty, residential buildings, small scale industries and a railway track for Kolkata’s circular railway that encircles the city and serves the suburbs. The crematorium is located on the river bank abutting the Strand Road which separates the squatters from the river bank. On an average, 70 - 80 dead bodies are cremated here daily, mostly using electric incinerators but some still use conventional, open pyre funerals burning wood. The chimneys of the crematorium belt out smoke as do nearby factories and cars (exhaust gas) in the busy roads of the area. Extreme air pollution is an everyday reality.

The river: The Hooghly River, which is a distributary of the mighty Ganges, flows through Kolkata before entering its estuary in Bay of Bengal. The residents consider the river to be dangerous because of the tidal bore that make the water level unpredictable and the river turbulent. A tidal bore is a strong tide that pushes up the river, against the current generating a strong surge which temporarily makes the river deeper.

Two children died during such a tidal surge last monsoon.

There are 40 ghats along the river where daily bathing, washing, death rituals, idol immersion and other activities take place which further pollute an already polluted river from industrial waste upstream. The everyday rituals generate a lot of flowers, fruits and other waste which are discarded in the river as a holy practice. There is death along and on the river; the children of this area have reported seeing dead bodies and carcasses of dead animals floating on the water and the fire at the wooden pyres at Nimtala Ghat never dies just as the smell of ghee and burning flesh hang thick in the air. The male relatives of the bereaved shave their heads at the ghat and immerse the ashes of the loved ones in the water. Yet there is life along and on the river as the riverbank and the river are possibly the only large open spaces available to children for play.

Right to play The findings of the study show that the children have almost no access to formal open spaces for play. Children greatly desired to play in the clean and decorated open space around the memorial of Rabindranath Tagore (poet and Nobel laureate) inside the crematorium but they are denied permission to do so by the guard. Children have no option but to seek out any and every available space irrespective of the risks they present. Most frequented play areas are the banks of the river by both boys and girls and the river itself for boys; the road between the railway track and the river bank; and on or along the railway tracks.

With little or no intervention from adults (especially for boys), children in this study were found to be in control of the time and space for play. As children have very few commercial toys, they exhibited enormous creativity in devising games using available resources, mostly manipulating loose parts to create play objects.

The children are very resilient and innovative in structuring their play often strategizing resource collection and manufacturing complex items for satisfying their play needs, demonstrating the idea that ‘everything makes a play object’.

Types of Play in Crisis Games on the river bank: Boys play Lattu or spinning the top. This game is played individually by most children. However, a variation of it, Guch Maramari, is played in groups as a competition game where a circle is drawn on the ground with all participants’ tops in it and one by one each child has to throw their tops with the aim of breaking the other tops. This is a rough game played aggressively with tops but without harming each other.

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india Play is gendered. Only a few types of play such as sculpting with mud, playing with pet animals, playing Bagbandi (a twoplayer strategy board game involving a tiger hunt) are played by both boys and girls. Girls mostly engage in pretend play, imaginative and role play, like, Biye Shadi (marriage game) and Pujo Pujo (Hindu ritualistic worship game). Biye Shadi, is a game where the migrant Bihari girls enact lengthy marriage ceremonies while singing traditional wedding songs; they play the part of both the bride (younger and shorter girls) and the groom (older girls).

The researchers were amazed to see how the girls knew every little nuance of the Hindu marriage ritual which they no doubt have seen countless times in the many temples in the local area. The girls’ marriage play imitated life in the greatest possible detail and the secluded women’s portion of the bank had ample loose parts for them to use such as flowers, garlands, rice grains, bangles, paper etc. that had been discarded after rituals on the banks. Pujo Pujo is another game where the girls enact Hindu worshipping rituals using salvaged materials from the river: flowers, garlands, fruits etc. Both Hindu and Muslim girls pray to Lord Shiva through play worship imploring him to give them a good husband. Girls also collect mud from the river and make henna like tattoos on their hands. Cooking, both real as part of their chores at home and imaginary in public places is another activity that is popular among the girls of all ages. There is little difference in the processes in pretend cooking and real cooking as the same utensils are used for both and same procedures followed except in real cooking precious edible ingredients are used. Teen mothers are also seen to join in imaginary play along with their infants making pretend food with their unmarried friends or making garlands and playing worship games with younger girls. These same garlands may even be sold on the street later. The boundaries of work and play, real and imaginary worlds fluidly overlap.

Games on the river: Floating on the river, in a handmade raft (called ‘trawler’ by children) is a game played by boys aged 7-14 years, sometimes joined by girls. This is by far the most ingenious and risky game the children play. The children make the rafts themselves from found loose parts, mainly plastic mats and thermocol (Styrofoam) pieces. Once made, they take these rafts to the middle of the wide river during day time and sometimes after sunset. They do not use any safety gear, but they seem to be well aware of the tide timings when the river swells up. They shared that they only fear the river dolphins who sometimes overturn the rafts.

The river is a major resource for children for collecting mud, salvaging loose parts such as styrofoam pieces, clay idols, coins, fruits and flowers among other things.

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Games on the Railway Track: Usually younger children till 5 years play on the tracks, as parents find it easier to supervise and keep an eye on them. Boys play balancing on tracks or pulling carts while the girls play with dolls or pretend cook with stones and leaves. Other games are tent making and badminton using plastic table tennis bats. Children as they grow older move to the river bank to play away from adult supervision.

Games on the road: Games played by children on the roads are spinning tops, cycling, skipping, bagbandi, dragging, pushing and riding selfmade wheeled toys and exploring all possible sources for procuring loose parts including garbage vats.

Adaptation and resilience through play in crisis Growing up in a risky and hazardous environment, children demonstrated an ability to adapt to the conditions in several ways: using the affordances offered by the assemblage of different places in their local area comprising the river, the banks, the track, the roads, the crematorium, other public places; resourcing loose parts from the local environment; constructing play props and devising games using loose parts and imagination. For example, playing Bagbandi with coloured bottle caps instead of conventional pieces and by drawing the grid of the game board on the flat surface of the river bank, or making cards with match boxes, or playing with salvaged fruits and flowers in the worship play, or constructing floating devises of every scale for the river, or making tents on the tracks between trains or play acting gods and goddesses with idol parts washed ashore by the river.

The process of making the trawler, is a great example of innovation and resilience of children. All the materials were collected by children from neighbouring localities through careful planning. The plastic mats on which dead bodies are laid on the floor for rituals before cremation and discarded afterwards were collected in the early evening before the adults came in to salvage the wooden cots under the mats. Children go to two fish markets located in Baghbazar and Howrah, about 1-2 km away, early in the morning twice a week to collect the thermocol, discarded by the fish mongers after they unpack the fish for sale. The children then sew up the mat to form a pouch into which they fill the thermocol pieces, to finish their ‘trawler’. They first do a test run along the banks and on satisfactory completion of the same they take it to the middle of the river.

Time: Children have ample time to play as education is not a priority.

But, gender plays a vital role in determining the type and time of play. After the age of 8 years, the girls and the boys usually do not

india play together. Housework reduces the time of free play for girls and they are allowed to play only after they finish all household chores. Boys also by the age of 14 years, start helping their fathers or brothers at work, which reduces their time to play. Children are often seen to combine work and play, for example, girls (between 8 and 14 years of age) engage in extensive role play, while washing clothes or utensils on the river bank. Even younger children, who are not let out of sight of the parents, start playing with the food that is given to them, sitting on the railway tracks.

Permission: There is no awareness about right to play of children in the larger society as is evident from the lack of designated play spaces or play programs within wider community development initiatives of different organizations. Parents neither encourage nor discourage children to play. However, there are examples that show adult support for play: a father made his daughter a temple structure to play Pujo Pujo with her friends. Younger children (3-6 years) are permitted to play only along the railway track as it is easier for parents to keep an eye on them from the shacks. The indirect surveillance of adults while children played on the river was observed when a young girl who had jumped into a raft with two other boys was immediately brought ashore by an adult male who quickly waded to the raft to pull her out. The community keeps strict vigilance to protect the girls from going too far into the river. The river banks are out of bounds for younger children after sunset. This is because as evening falls, many adults, mostly men, engage in illegal gambling, drug peddling and drug use on the banks. Country liquor, weed, hash, bhang etc. are easily available near the river and many adolescent boys also like to seek the anonymity and privacy of the river bank after dark to do drugs. The children disperse to the other nearby banks, seek out other safer places and continue to play. Sometimes, after dark, children crowd inside tea stalls to watch TV if it is available.

As the fieldwork happened over three winter months, the seasonal variation of play could not be documented. For example, during the religious festivals, the nature of play changes to activities like ‘shoe keeping’, supplying match sticks and candles for lighting incense sticks etc, which merges the realms of play

Researchers and professional volunteers supporting the research Senior Researchers: • Santanil Ganguly (Jhalapala) • Ashish Das (Earth Care) Research Team: • Srinjoy Das (Earthcare) • Mousree Ganguly (Jhalapala) • Pavel Paul (Jhalapala) • Somen Biswas (Jhalapala)

and work just as it does when children play with clothes and utensils on the riverbank while washing them.

The Access to Play in Crisis research in Nimtola Ghat provides a counter narrative to the dominant ones which are framed around categorizing these children as street children, as partially socialized as they live outside the regulatory spheres of the family (stable home-based) and the school and are widely perceived to engage in loitering and vagrancy. In an environment of high poverty, alcohol and substance abuse, the children also face increased risk of violence at home and in public places. They are often beaten at home and have seen adults abusing and fighting with each other which sometimes translates to violence on them.

Most children here are first generation school-goers with very high school drop-out rates around the ages 10-14 years. Girls get involved in child rearing and domestic chores at home, while boys even before dropping out from school start helping their fathers or relatives in their work. Early engagement of children in labour means missing out on the chance to be educated and getting a healthy start in life. All this is probably true for most children living here. However, these children do not perceive themselves as victims. And they are not, at least not the passive kind.

In Nimtola Ghat children and young people live in a context of limited regulations and adult supervision, almost no access to formal play spaces or commercial games and toys. Consequently, they can be seen to be the most active users of every conceivable and accessible public space, loitering, sitting, working, sleeping, studying and playing. The immense richness of their play, spanning across many play types, seems to suggest that these street children despite contrary dominant narratives enjoy a form of childhood that is privileged with spontaneity, creativity, play, freedom of movement and emotional expressions. The very qualities that we seek to recover or reinstate when we lament the loss of childhood in the modern consumerist society. What emerges from the myriad forms of culturally embedded, self-structured and self-organized deep play of children as witnessed in Nimtola Ghat, is an image of children as resilient social actors whose spontaneous and creative activities outdoors expands the vision of risks and social possibilities of play itself.

Professional Volunteers (support in map making, urban situation analysis, writing draft reports) • Sonia Guha (Urban Designer) • Debarati Chakraborty (Urban Designer) Research monitoring, editing and writing final report • Shalini Gupta (Action for Children’s Environments) • Subrata Ghosh (Action for Children’s Environments)

SEPTEMBER 2017

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nepal

NEPAL APC STUDY AT A GLANCE RESEARCH PARTNER – YUWALAYA, NEPAL

Crisis context The massive Gorkha Earthquake on April 25, 2015 affected 14 districts of Nepal. Landslides in the Himalayas and aftershocks followed it for days. 8,980 people died, whereas 195 are missing and 22,303 were injured; 202,157 houses were fully damaged and 214,202 houses were partially damaged.

The earthquake affected the livelihoods of over 2.28 million households and 8 million people.

Nepal is a small and poor country where a majority of the population lives in rural areas. The destruction of lives, livelihoods and property was a major setback undoing many developmental gains made over the past many years. For example, Nepal had seen an 80% decline in maternal mortality between 1991 and 2011. However, 41% of children under 5 years are stunted, 11% are wasted, and 29% are underweight.

The earthquake severely damaged healthcare infrastructure in the 14 most affected districts particularly putting pregnant women and young children at risk. Following the earthquake, women and children in Nepal are also at a greater risk for violence, sexual abuse and trafficking.

The Nepal research for IPA’s Access to Play in Crisis (APC) was conducted in two villages, Bhumlutar in Kavre disctrict and Kunchowk in Sindupalchowk district. Most of the earthquake victims are still in the temporary shelters and also in their old damaged houses. The government of Nepal had committed support of 200,000 NRs to rebuild their homes in three installments along with another 300,000 NRs as soft loan. But the process of getting the money is lengthy and complex. A few aid-providing organizations committed support to rebuilding the homes and schools, but due to political instability and financial mismanagement the reconstruction work is being delayed. Homes are being rebuilt by the affected people using the skills they have (along with new skills from different trainings) and materials purchased in the open market and also by re-using the materials salvaged from their broken homes.

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Impact on the right to play The awareness of the right to play is currently missing in both the children and adult duty bearers. Consequently, the interventions for children at village level have not prioritized provision of space and resources for play nor sensitized the community for removing the social barriers to children’s play in ordinary times as well as in the rebuilding efforts after the earthquake.

Immediately after the earthquake no children played as they were too shocked and in grief over the loss of loved ones and their homes. However, as the rebuilding process started, younger children were sent out to play, but were asked to stay away from unsafe places, including the open spaces which were near fully or partially damaged buildings and steep slopes.

However, people used many of these open spaces, such as playgrounds and school premises, as sites for temporary shelters they built themselves with any available and salvaged materials.

So, children mostly played on the roads, which were not safe due to movement of people and materials in the aftermath of the earthquake. In Sindupalchowk, there were still some open spaces that were safe for playing. But in Kavre, whose terrain had steep slopes and forest areas there were no safe spaces for playing.

Barriers to playing • After the earthquake and the aftershocks that followed, the destruction around the children traumatized them and prevented even small children from playing.

• As children were asked to go play in safe places while parents worked, lack of adequate playable open spaces in the villages or spacious playgrounds in schools prevented many types of play.

• For girls above 11 years in age, permission to play is typically withheld as girls are expected to help with household chores or do homework while at home. However, when permission to play is given to girls after finishing all assigned tasks, they prefer to stay indoors and play games on their mobile phones.

The habit of playing outside gradually erodes away.

• Older adolescent girls (15-18 years) are considered grown-ups and not only do they have no social permission to play, they also do not want to play at home and in the neighbourhood.

nepal • After the earthquake, adolescent boys were engaged in the reconstruction of their destroyed homes. Also, as they are considered “big children”, they are not expected to play. So, they did not play at all, but instead talked to friends and relatives on mobile phones.

• For younger boys the major obstacles to play are the lack of adequate game materials and safe places to play. Few admitted that their parents also do not allow them to play.

• The fear of thefts and trafficking engulfed families and aid workers alike who were more focused on survival and protection of children rather than promoting the right to play.

• Disabled children were tied up in safe open spaces to keep them out of harm’s way while their families were busy in rebuilding activities.

• Right after the earthquake, the aid agencies were more focused on distributing NFRI and food items and not recreational materials or hygiene kits that were urgently needed by children. Child friendly spaces were also created only after many weeks.

• The aid agencies prioritized work in the sectors of education, protection, livelihood and reconstruction. Across different organizations responsibilities were divided to cater to different areas so that there was duplication in the works through interagency cooperation. Right to play was on no one’s agenda.

• The child club network in Nepal is well known as a platform for fulfilling the rights of the child. But most child clubs are working on specific issues and some rights based on the focus area of the different donors and NGOs supporting them. Though child clubs organize competitions for games and sports, no work has been done till now to improve opportunities for play and removing barriers that prevent everyday play or free play.

Coping and playing in situations of crisis When the schools reopened after a month, they became the primary places where children of all ages could play safely and engage in sports and other recreational activities. Adolescent girls play traditional games of Chungi and Dhyak as well as badminton and kho kho in school. Many of the schools had child clubs that regularly organize sports and recreation activities for children. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake the child clubs were not functional like the schools, but they resumed activities after the schools reopened. Some of them received material support from aid agencies such as stationery and art supplies. Some child friendly spaces were also set up in some schools in Sindhupalchowk district which benefitted the students attending the spaces.

Chungi: Leaves or rubber bands are bundled together and used as a bouncy ball which children bounce on their feet; the one with the maximum bounces wins.

Dhyak: this is a form of hopscotch that is played on a flat surface after drawing a grid and using stones.

For adolescent girls, if they do not get permission to play, they play in secrecy inside their homes and pretend to do something else when their parents come. Some girls from Sindhupalchowk maintained a daily diary as encouraged by their school as an outlet for their feelings and emotions in the situation of crisis.

Across the age groups children seem to use loose parts and their imagination to play in this devastated rural landscape.

Younger children engage in a lot of construction play as they are constantly exposed to rebuilding activities around them.

Sometimes, they also build their own houses (made up of wood, leaves, straw etc.), create their own household materials and play. They also engage in play-acting where they create their own story, and act it out.

Nepal’s children’s ideas for fulfilling their right to play Almost all the children of this research felt that they needed a safe play space in the center of their village that would protect them from wild animals and traffickers. They also wanted this ground to be equipped with game materials, water and toilet.

In a context where water and sanitation are not universally available in all homes, this is a necessity from the perspective of health and well being of children in the community.

The research team recommends: 1. Communities should recognize that girls and boys need to play everyday for their well-being and healthy development.

Awareness needs to be raised on this issue and community outreach undertaken to remove the many restrictions on children’s right to play, particularly for girls.

2. Organizations working for children should include right to play within their program activities and create opportunities for girls and boys of different age groups to play safely in crisis-hit areas immediately after the crisis.

3. There is a need for sustaining programs started after a disaster through follow-up programs to remove the barriers to free play in normal times as well.

Nepal Research team: Technical Lead: Santosh Maharjan Research Coordinator: Diwakar Pyakurel Field research team: • Sumikshya Khadka • Deepak Sunuwar

• Kabita Basnet • Jenish Maharjan SEPTEMBER 2017

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lebanon

LEBANON STUDY AT A GLANCE RESEARCH PARTNER – BEYOND ASSOCIATION Crisis context Since March 2011, over one million refugees have been displaced and sought refuge in Lebanon and as the crisis evolved into a protracted emergency the conditions for Syrian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese have worsened. Syrian refugees live in informal temporary shelters (ITSs) dispersed all over Lebanon, but mostly in rural and agricultural areas. Hundreds of thousands of school age children are left without any education.

The children describe the crisis as something horrible, terrifying, awful, dangerous, and full of death, problems and nightmares. Most of them expressed their thoughts about crisis with a preoccupation with the scenes of war either witnessed directly or through televisions, giving specific details about bombs, destruction, displacement, being lost and away from home, and losing friends, relatives and parents.

Impact on the right to play Parents and caregivers are focusing on meeting the basic emergency humanitarian needs, leaving no place for talking about right to play. Children must go either to work in the agricultural land or go to school if they can. Children themselves become convinced about the uselessness of playing and they are taking responsibilities that are bigger than they can handle.

Despite what they described about crisis, the children are very happy to name lots of games that they play together such as football, basketball, hide and seek, rope pulling and racing, or other kinds of games that can be played alone such as puzzle games, playing with dolls, puppets, and modeling clay. Others prefer to play educational games related to storytelling, drawing, coloring or even practice making sentences, arranging words in sentences, and decorating their classrooms at school or centers.

These games are played in the time remaining after their work and educational or home responsibilities are completed.

Barriers to playing • because they play in open space, play is interrupted by older children, strangers and other adults

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• playing in open spaces exposes children to meeting with ‘misbehaving’ children or adults some of whom are equipped with sharp tools like blades or even guns • unclean environment especially when rubbish is scattered around the settlements make it very hard to children to play safely without having cuts, injuries and disease • vehicles of all kinds, also hinder the child’s ability to play freely and safely • the children in some cases play in streets or in the parking areas or in the agricultural field with all its dangerous animals and insects.

• indoor spaces have no private areas for children to play in • in some cases, the living site is located near unsafe areas like rivers, making it very dangerous for the children to play outside • shortages of materials and equipment also hinder the children’s ability to play and families cannot afford to buy games or even prioritize play • disabled children have no facilities at all for playing with their peers • girls of 14 and above (and sometime younger) are not allowed to play because it makes it harder to convince men that she is ready for engagement or marriage Coping and playing in situations of crisis Children were observed to make use of every single available space indoor or outdoor whatever the conditions. Children play in the tents, shelters, in streets, parking, fields, and the centers of Beyond Association.

Children reported feel annoyed and bored when not allowed to play freely when they are tired from their daily tasks.

Some described watching TV silently with a lot of anger and that they try to find a place to play inside their houses.

Children invent their own toys from plastic, papers, and clothes. They play with them and they are reused as kites, puppets, or board games.

The children reported on their dreams of having lots of tools and materials such as ropes, footballs, basketballs, puzzles, swings, toys, crayons, and coloring papers to enhance their

lebanon playing environment. They are dreaming of a place that is full of cute friends who are safe, large, clean and healthy.

They reported about their aims to have a clean playground with green meadows, without dangerous animals, without stones and sharp tools, without strangers and kidnapping. A place for playing is to be free of dangers, weapons of any kind, without fighting planes. A place that is always open to welcome them whatever the condition is.

The Lebanon team recommends: • Raising the awareness on the importance of the access to play in crisis must be conducted among all the stakeholders and policy makers to include the right to play in any emergency response.

Play has proved to be as important as the basic humanitarian aid.

• Amend the minimum child protection standards of the UN agencies to include the right to play. Creating a safe place for play must be included in the designing of the shelters for the communities affected by the crisis.

• Staff working in emergency response must promote the access to play and the importance of the right to play among the parents, caregivers and the children themselves.

Case study: Role of adults and organizations in promoting the right to play – safe space for children’s play During emergencies and crisis most of the attention is given to humanitarian aid such as safety, shelters, food and health which are the basic standards used in any emergency response.

BEYOND Association has added to these standards the creation of a safe place for children’s free play that has been tested in all of our emergency interventions. The impact has been very positive from community members and the children themselves.

A fire at Al Marj, one of the Syrian displaced camps, burnt down 75 tents and around 85 families who live in these tents were affected. Simultaneously with the medical teams, a group of BEYOND animators set up tents to create a safe place for children to play. First, the activities were focusing on helping the children to express their fears and negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts; second, the children were left to choose their play; third, adults from the Syrian community begin to help these children in free play and even to play with them.

• Emergency response and work went easily without having the children around • In general, this intervention has alleviated the burdens of the emergency.

From that date, BEYOND Association took the decision that creating a safe place for children to play in any emergency is as important as the other humanitarian interventions.

To the same objectives, BEYOND Association created a full curriculum titled “Play and Learn” to help the Syrian displaced children to get their education in a smooth and easy way. We noticed that there were no drop outs from our non-formal education and children were happy to come to our centers, and the parents were involved to see the progress of their children.

Besides parents reported that when the children come back to their tents they are reacting positively and they have friends to play with, which creates a space for the parents to take care of their problems.

BEYOND Association, under the basic life skills training for adolescent and adults has included a big part for voluntarism and especially promoting the right to play for children and how they can help the children to access the play in crisis by creating a safe place for them and to develop the creativity within the children to create their free play.

In most of the Syrian displaced camps the families are renting the land to build their tents so they are not willing to pay more in order to create a safe place for children to play.

The impacts of this intervention could be summarized as follows: • Caregivers and parents could focus on the emergency knowing that their children were safe • Children were mentally empowered and they helped their parents to overcome the emergency • Children were not watching the damage and casualties which could increase their fears and trauma

SEPTEMBER 2017

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turkey

TURKEY STUDY AT A GLANCE RESEARCH PARTNER – DR. MINE GOL GUVEN, BOGAZICI UNIVERSITY, TURKEY Crisis context The Roma are a nomadic people descended from groups which left India around 1,000 years ago and began arriving in the territory of today’s European Union in or around the 14th century. Despite being home to the largest Roma population in Europe (about 2.7 million, comprising 3.71% of the Turkish population) Turkey- like most countries - has failed to adequately integrate the Roma. They live in poverty and face exclusion and discrimination in terms of access to employment, education, housing and health services. Deeply entrenched structural discrimination and stereotyping prevent political commitments for Roma’s inclusion. The Roma were affected by the financial and economic crises and are now even more at risk of exclusion and discrimination and of losing the priority status as Europe’s largest minority in the face of the ongoing refugee crisis.

The APC project focuses on three predominantly Roma neighborhoods in Istanbul, Turkey: Sulukule, Kustepe, Tarlabasi. Recent government policies (based on law 5366, called “Renovation, Protection, Cherishing and Use of Worn Historical and Cultural Immovable Properties”) are targeting centuries old Roma neighborhoods including Sulukule and Tarlabsi for “urban regeneration.” Municipalities are given extensive authorization to implement projects, and that can include the declaration of areas as regeneration areas which leads to expropriation, eviction, and demolishment of properties in case of disagreement between municipality and house owners. Already a marginalized and disenfranchised minority group, Roma people who are being displaced by the urban regeneration are fearful about the future.

Impact on the right to play Loss of homes, displacement, severing of social ties and friendships, isolation and readjustment to new surroundings, typically in slums in other parts of Istanbul, all have a negative impact on health. A lack of education and play opportunities, the risk of bullying and marginalization on account of their low SES status, and the risk of racial and ethnic discrimination in the new neighborhoods are some of the many risks faced by the Roma children. The children in the Roma areas do not have a chance to play freely in the community both for social (embedded violence and threat to personal security) and physical (heavy traffic and lack of space to play) reasons.

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Children’s centers are crucial to Roma children in these neighborhoods for education support and social experiences.

Grasshouse Science and Art Center, founded by the Roma Rights Association was one such important children’s center in Sulukule. But, it was shut down due to the urban regeneration project depriving the local children of a much-needed community resource. The center was moved to Tarlabasi in Sisili municipality but many Sulukule children still go to this far off place on weekends to avail the services. One Grasshouse worker in Tarlabasi highlighted the impact of this structural crisis on children: “Some of the children come to Grasshouse without having any food during the day. We provide them food with the help of the Sisli municipality. For one family who needed it, we have been packing the leftovers. Some of the children do not have proper clothes to wear. We found people who would give their used clothes for these children. Some children have been experiencing family violence. Typically those children are from families with lower income and education level where fathers do not have jobs”. She further added, “Roma children are stigmatized at school. We could not build a partnership with the school and the teachers. So what we do is make Grasshouse available and welcoming for children and help them with their academic work”.

Barriers to playing • Lack of open spaces in the high-density Roma neighbourhoods in Istanbul restrict opportunities for outdoor play for children • Children find the few provisions of municipal parks with standard play equipment on safety carpet and fence very boring • The streets are the default play spaces but they are risky places on account of heavy traffic flows and fear of crime • Frequent streetfights, drugs and prostitution, stray animals etc., make the streets unsafe.

• Parents tell stories about kidnapping, burglary, street fights to scare children and to prevent them from playing outdoors.

• Schools do not permit free play during recess and take away props made by children • Minority Roma children face discrimination and stereotyping at integrated schools • Roma children themselves discriminate against poorer Roma and Syrian refugee children • After school centres are focused on structured activities controlled by adults.

turkey Coping and playing in situations of crisis As there is high drop rate among Roma children and irregular school attendance, and as the neighborhood outdoors were considered unsafe and uncomfortable (in winter), the children’s centers that offer after-school programs are the only spaces available to many Roma children in Istanbul for socialization and learning. These centers offer recreational activities and hobby classes including on weekends.

While discussing how they play with the researchers, children responded with things that they thought they were supposed to do and not what they actually did: “The child goes to a park, garden, street or school yard to play”. Later they opened up a bit and said: “some rich kids have private pools to play in but Roma kids go to the ocean to swim and that is play as well.”

Play was controlled by adults in the centers. Instead of providing space for innovation it often led to conflicts between different children (boys and girls, ethnic groups etc.) as children could not freely choose what they wanted to play and with whom they wanted to play.

Five boys and four girls were playing a guessing game with a male volunteer. The girls formed one group and the boys the other. After a few rounds when the volunteer encouraged the groups to be more theatrical in their performances for the benefit of the guessing group, the boys protested and said, “We are out!” and walked out of the room.

They came back again almost immediately.

The volunteer wanted them to watch the game if they didn’t want to play. The boys began going out and coming back again and again.

The volunteer got irritated and said, “If you interfere, you are out! I don’t understand, you come and go again!”

One boy replied, “Teacher, you started this game with us.

Why did you include the girls?”

“Because we do not discriminate. What is the purpose of coming in and going out, and screaming?” replied the volunteer.

The boys shouted: Fuuuuunnnnnn!

The volunteer: There are rules when you are having fun.

There are rights. Now get out!

This cyclic behavior continued for a few more times.

Exasperated, the volunteer said “Ok. Get out!” A little later he said, “If you do not want to play, do not play”, but soon afterward he changed his mind and said, “I forbid you to get out!”

The boys went out anyway, screaming “Ahhhhhh! The girls came and ruined the game.”

In Kustepe where the children’s center also discriminated against poorer lower town children, a lot of aggressive play was witnessed in young boys in the streets who fought with knives and burned trash. These boys were role-playing as little men.

They were growing up in a tough neighborhood where acting like a man involves being aggressive and tough.

However, during games managed by the volunteers, some children digress and create opportunities for themselves to independently engage with other children in the group. Such activities that may include kicking or smacking other children in the middle or on the butt are either immediately met with disapproval from the volunteers who verbally warn (“Do not do that!”) or express disapproval through facial expressions, or are at times ignored as they continue to play with other children. Such acts are perhaps best understood as attempts by children to break out of the structure and initiate their own games. However, the current operations of the centers - due to constraints of space and trained staff - do not actively promote free play. If it sometimes happens in the cracks of the imposed order, it is either called out as bad behavior or ignored.

Although the children seemed to enjoy their time with the volunteers who were young college students, they look out for opportunities to escape from the center to catch a breath outside and come back. Both boys and girls of middle school age would do this. Even within the center children defied the structure imposed on them by singing out loud, screaming, or doing their own thing such as in one case one little girl who kept cleaning the counter and floor, not following the volunteers’ instructions.

The Turkey team recommends: • Shared cultural values between adult providers of play and the children they engage with are important to understand the cultural influences on play. The Grasshouse center’s rap workshops worked the best because Roma youth who grew up in Sulukule worked with children who are growing up in Sulukule. Volunteers should be trained and recruited from the local community for working with children.

• Playwork training of volunteers which needs to be organized maybe in partnership with universities that send volunteers to work with children at the centers.

• Monitoring of the center activities by accredited social workers to ensure that the best interests of all children are ensured in program activities.

• Government and local authorities take some steps to plan the local environment to be safer and friendlier for children’s free play and independent mobility.

• All stakeholders, including parents, community leader, youth and children and the municipality, need to come together to create safer conditions within the Roma neighborhoods.

SEPTEMBER 2017

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toolkit

ACCESS TO PLAY FOR CHILDREN IN SITUATIONS OF CRISIS PLAY: RIGHTS AND PRACTICES A TOOLKIT FOR STAFF, MANAGERS AND POLICY MAKERS PUBLISHED: IPA, 2017

IPA is delighted to announce the publication of its first toolkit to support the play of children in situations of crisis. The toolkit for staff, managers and policy makers, which is available to download from the IPA website, aims to make change at two levels: • To increase and improve the practical application of children’s right to play so that children have sufficient time, space and support to play • To raise awareness of children’s right to play in crisis situations at programme and strategic levels.

The toolkit is designed to: • provide clear and concise information to individuals and organisations working with children and families in situations of crisis • provide practical, step-by-step tools and templates for undertaking work linked to the provision of time, space, permission and materials for play • be easy to print and photocopy so that it can be used to support activities in the field and for training and development.

IPA is uniquely well-placed to develop such a resource, having a significant pool of expertise within its membership with direct experience of providing for play in the most diverse and challenging situations. An international expert drafting group was therefore formed to work with the APC team on the creation of the toolkit. The expert drafting group was made up of individuals and organisations with direct understanding and experience of providing for play in crisis situations including humanitarian and natural disasters, conflict and displacement.

(See the toolkit for the full list of writers and experts.) It was through these collaborations that the toolkit was created.

To draft and then fine-tune the toolkit, two main gatherings were held, the first in Istanbul (2016) as guests of Aktif Yaşam Derneği/Active Living Assoviation and the second in London (2017) as guests of Hackney Adventure Playground Association.

It became clear in the drafting that while common core information is required for everyone with an interest in access to play in crisis, there are at least three distinct audiences Staff, Managers and Policy Makers. This directed us to the development of a highly focussed toolkit, with an emphasis on providing the specific tools needed by each audience.

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The material provided to each audience reflects their roles and responsibilities differentiated to their level of influence, in relation to: environments for play (including direct advice on its provision); resourcing; facilitation of play; ethical considerations; obligations in relation to children’s rights, including those of disabled children; action planning and models of provision.

Protection and safeguarding issues Development of the toolkit provided an opportunity to consider ethical and safeguarding dimensions for those supporting play for children in situations of crisis. The expert group told us they were aware of too many examples of unsafe and unethical practices (at various levels of seriousness), that put both children and adult staff/ volunteers at risk of physical or emotional harm and exploitation.

The toolkit therefore integrates a rights-based approach, including a statement on the play-rights of disabled children, and attention to ethical considerations in situations of crisis. The managers section focuses on support, induction, training and riskbenefit assessment which aims to create working environments which are safer for children and adults.

IPA believes that the APC toolkit has created a reference point which did not previously exist for good practice, ethical considerations and the practical application of children’s right to play in situations of crisis. While there is far more to do – and IPA is keen to develop further specialised information as a result – the toolkit offers the chance of a firmer footing to those wishing to support children’s play in situations of crisis.

Interested in helping IPA increase the impact of APC toolkit?

Please get in touch if you are able to partner, support or sponsor: • Further print runs of the toolkit • Distribution of the toolkit • Translation of the toolkit into languages other than English • Development of complementary APC materials.

apc synthesis

Child led walks

Flower map

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Risk mapping India

Risk mapping India

Bodymapping

Interview with props

Bodymapping SEPTEMBER 2017

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apc synthesis Play and coping Natural disasters: The APC research engaged with two mega natural disasters, the Great East Japan earthquake and the triple disaster precipitated by it and the Gorkha earthquake in Nepal. Japan is a high income and predominantly urban country whereas Nepal is a low-income and predominantly rural country. Even though Japan is three times the size of Nepal, almost 100 million more people live in Nepal than Japan. It is widely believed that had the Gorkha earthquake happened near the densely populated capital city, Kathmandu, the death toll and casualties would have been in millions.

JAPAN Japan is one of the most earthquakeprone countries in the world and also one of the best prepared for the disaster.

Immediately after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the tsunami in the coast of the Tohuku area, people were evacuated to schools and large halls and lived in overcrowded conditions for about six months when temporary housing was constructed by the Japanese government. Most of the children said that in the evacuation shelters, permission to play was withheld and also children spontaneously refrained from playing indoors in the prevalent atmosphere of loss and despair. The outdoor landscape was piled with debris and limited children’s play. Only when volunteers visited these shelters, children were able to have different experiences from playing video games all day.

However, some of the children would hit the debris with a stick as if this was a way to deal with their stress expressed by one child as “allowing their stress to explode”.

Different types of temporary houses, after the evacuation stage, also did not provide access to play. Irrespective of where children were staying, whether at a relative’s house where there were no friends around, or public temporary housing where there were no places for play around the houses, or even when children returned to their original house directly from the evacuation shelter, children had no adequate space or opportunity to play.

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The disaster destroyed spaces where children used to play. Parks and schoolyards became dominated by construction work for temporary houses and left over spaces around them were covered in tarmac and used for parking cars. Friends got separated while moving to temporary and other housing options in different locations. As many areas were depopulated, schools were shut down and integrated resulting in children travelling long distances by bus to commute to new schools. With long commutes and the demands of formal education and private after school programs, time was increasingly a constraint on free play.

Most temporary houses were flimsy and children were told not to play by adults.

As they did not want to be further stressed by noise. Children were also told that they were not to play outdoors which led them to stay indoors and play video games. However, some children tried to seek out secret places such as under the bridge, a place they had no parental license to explore.

They enjoyed catching fish in the river.

More importantly they cherished the riverside as a place to have contact with nature. Although most children complained that there were no places to play, one boy reported that after he lost his house and stayed in different places and went to different schools, when he found the adventure playground Koganehama near his new home, he finally recovered from the trauma and loss of friends and felt that was “his place”.

Example of resilience: In the Japanese crisis context where children had no space or permission to play in their immediate surroundings within the temporary housing, seeking out secret play spaces away from the adult gaze and control sustained many children by allowing them to exercise their autonomy in making play choices.

Typically, adults did not approve.

However, one mother did. She simply did not say “don’t do” too much and allowed her daughter to try out different things. Every day when her daughter returned from playing outside, the mother enjoyed listening to what her daughter did outdoors. This is what her

daughter had to say about why this was important: “If adults rely on us to be ourselves, we can use our imagination to find a way to be, though we may sometimes be close to breaking when we challenge ourselves and do a dangerous thing, but it is better for us to have a chance to find a way by ourselves.”

For more details see the case study of Japan in this issue.

NEPAL Unlike in Japan, people in Nepal were not evacuated and taken to safer places.

People ran outside and eventually constructed temporary shelters for themselves in the open spaces of the village. Two years after the earthquake, the recovery efforts have been stalled by political instability and money mismanagement resulting in many still staying in their makeshift shelters outdoors while some have moved back to their damaged houses in the two districts under the APC research.

However younger children (6-10 years) seem to enjoy this new communal living outdoors with neighbors. Parents actively encourage them to play with their friends but ask them to stay away from unsafe places such as near fully or partially damaged buildings and steep slopes while they along with their older children rebuild their homes or attend to livelihoods. Homes are being rebuilt by people using the skills they have (along with new skills from different trainings), using the materials available in the market and also re-using the materials they have salvaged while demolishing their homes.

Older adolescent boys are actively involved in rebuilding and coordinating relief materials for their families. Young children’s play, unsurprisingly involved construction play as they are constantly exposed to rebuilding activities around them. Sometimes, they also build their own houses (from pieces of wood, leaves, straw etc.), create their own household objects and role play, sometimes play act a new story made up by them.

As shelters were located in the open spaces in their community including in the play grounds and school premises, children

apc synthesis mostly played on the roads, which were not safe due to frequent movement of people and materials in the aftermath of the disaster. In Sindupalchowk, there were still some open spaces which were safe for playing. But in Kavre, as the terrain had steep slopes and forested areas, there were no safe spaces for playing. When the schools reopened after a month, they became the primary places where children of all ages could play safely and engage in sports and other recreational activities.

Many schools had child clubs which regularly organize sports and recreational activities for children. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake the child clubs were not functional but they resumed activities after the schools reopened.

Some of them received material support from aid agencies such as stationary and art supplies. Some child friendly spaces were also set up in some schools in Sindhupalchowk district which benefitted the students attending the spaces.

Because of the destruction of many properties, loss of their relatives and neighbours and disruption of their normal lifestyle, almost all the adolescents in Nepal said that they rarely played after the earthquake. In fact, the destruction around them traumatized them. Moreover the fear of thefts and trafficking engulfed families and aid workers; the focus of the development and disaster risk reduction community was on survival and protection of children rather than promoting right to play.

Children’s coping strategies include playing games on mobile phones in the cracks of daily routines by avoiding parental attention. Some girls from Sindhupalchowk maintained a daily diary as encouraged by their school as an outlet for their feelings and emotions in the situation of crisis. The disabled children were the most affected by the earthquake.

Some of them were tied up in safe open spaces to keep them from getting in harm’s way while their families were busy in rebuilding activities. They only received some material support like clothes and in some cases wheelchairs as aid but no psychosocial support or play support.

The two favourite local games played by children across all ages in the neighbourhood and school involve loose parts. Chungi: leaves or rubber

bands are bundled together and used as a bouncy ball which children bounce on their feet; the one with the maximum bounces wins. Dhyak: this is a form of hopscotch that is played with stones on a flat surface after drawing a grid.

Boys in addition play with marbles, and some local games with stones and many different ball games.

For more details see the case study of Nepal in this issue.

Humanitarian crisis: A humanitarian crisis (or “humanitarian disaster”) is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or wellbeing of a community or large group of people (Humanitarian Coalition n.d.). The situations of humanitarian crisis represented in the APC research include the deeply entrenched structural discrimination against the Roma community in Turkey that prevent political commitments for their inclusion and the crisis of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, which despite being one of the smallest and poorest country in the region, is today the only one that has maintained an open border for refugees.

TURKEY The three Roma neighborhoods under this study in Istanbul were all poor, lacked open spaces for outdoor play and had unsafe public places. The APC project took place in winter and so outdoor play was restricted by parents to prevent children from catching a cold. However, parents tell stories about kidnapping, burglary, street fights to scare children from venturing out too much even in fair weather. There is some truth to these stories as crime is not uncommon; street fights, prostitution, drugs are part of the urban reality here. Consequently, children do not have a chance to play freely in the community. The only places which were considered safe spaces are the children’s centers run by different organizations and university volunteers.

In Sulukule, adolescents, growing up in the shadow of evictions for the past 10 years to make way for a major redevelopment project, do not like to talk about it. Instead they express their

feelings through art (graffiti) and music (rap). However, they like going to the Byzantine ruins in the edge of Sulukule and climb up the walls that collapsed during the 1999 earthquake. They love to look at the view from the broken walls even though this place is a drug hotspot and a murder has happened here recently.

The schools too do not permit free play during recess and take away any props made by children for play such as newspaper footballs. The schools only promote academic progress due to the entrance exams in each level. So, the pressure from parents and schools to do well is strong with little time or opportunities for children to play and have leisure activities. However, most of the Roma children do not attend school regularly on account of discriminatory school policies. School principals ask them to stay away because of the discomfort of non-Roma parents towards mixing of Roma and non-Roma kids in school. Just as Roma children experience discrimination, they too participate in discriminating against other children even within the Roma community such as the poorer lower town children in Kutepe as well as Syrian refugees.

Roma children have ample free time but very few places to go so they attend the after-school and weekend centers catering to children up to 14 years, which gives them an opportunity to meet with their friends and peers. Even though the centers are one of the most important socialization places for Roma children, play at the centers is adult-initiated and adult-managed (by volunteers) with limited opportunities for free play, particularly in outdoor spaces. Some activities are more flexible and creative such as different art projects while others are more oriented towards developing academic skills.

In Kustepe, the most unsafe of the three neighborhoods in this study, although the children seemed to enjoy their time with the volunteers, they were on the lookout for opportunities to escape from the center, to catch a breath outside and come back. Both boys and girls of middle school age would do this. Even within the centre children defied the structure imposed on them by singing out loud, screaming or doing their own thing, not

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apc synthesis following the volunteers’ instructions.

One boy’s shouting imitated a gang leader. He and his friends laughed at this performance and they shouted, “Do it again, do it again”. This is an example of free play using language as a tool for amusement and fun, or ludic language play (Cook 1997) where the speaker’s use of the voice of another (gang leader) entailed a kind of role-play for comic effect. It also created a space for childinitiated free play and amusement within structured activities. Other examples of free play were also seen: a 10-year-old girl was walking around not involving herself in any activities. She tapped on the glass to annoy the boys and succeeded in distracting them. She offered a cue which the boys returned by chasing her around, pulling and pushing her, and together they framed free play under the disapproving glare of volunteers.

Example of resilience: A group of Roma youth (18-23 years) who grew up in Sulukule in the shadow of the demolitions of the regeneration project started a rap group called Tahribat-i Isyan. Rap is a fitting vehicle for these teens to give voice to their fear and hopes in the context of political, social, and economic oppression. The afterschool center they visited as kids called Grasshouse (started by the Roma Rights Association) was shut down in Sulukule as was the café where they practiced music. The municipality in charge of Sulukule opened a Sulukele Art Academia in the new development and offered a practice space to the rap band there. But on condition that their music is approved and they remained actively involved in the center’s programs which included teaching a hobby (e.g. teaching a musical instrument) or helping children do their homework. The group refused to give up their musical freedom.

The Grasshouse center had reopened in another neighborhood managed by a more liberal political municipality. So, the teen rappers take the children further way from Sulukule over the weekends to teach rap at the reopened Grasshouse center there.

For more details see the case study of Turkey in this issue.

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LEBANON

Everyday Crisis:

The APC research in Lebanon worked with vulnerable Lebanese children and Syrian refugees’ children

Both the contexts of everyday crisis in this research deal with migrant laborers who have moved from rural to urban areas in India and Thailand, within and across borders in search of a better life for themselves and their children. However in both cases the migrants worked in unequally remunerated or underpaid jobs, tolerating many abuses and deprivations, settling in slums as illegal residents, exposed to pollution, crime and environmental threats, with limited access to basic services such as clean water and sanitation, health and education.

who either live in Informal Tented Settlements, or in collective shelters for Syrians and Lebanese. Many of the participating children were out of school, some were child laborers while others attended formal or non-formal education programs. But they all came to the BEYOND Association centers in Bekaa, Beirut, and the North. The children described the crisis in horrific details: bombs, destruction, displacement, being lost and away from home; and losing friends, relatives and parents.

There are several barriers to children’s play ranging from garbage in the neighborhoods, to fear of fights with weapons, unsafe adults as well as heavy vehicular movement that threaten children’s independent mobility, hazards of pests and animals in open fields, hazards of risky sites next to rivers and sea and social constraints on girls restricting their play outdoors. It is no wonder that the children in Lebanon described their favourite play space as “a place where playing is free of dangers, weapons of any kind, and fighting planes; a place that is always open to welcome children.”

Despite the crisis children played wherever and whenever possible at home, in the space between tents, in their neighborhoods or at the center. For younger children under 10 years there was a lot of free play. Playing with balls, rope, hide and seek, running around, playing with dolls and puppets, puzzles, modelling with clay among others.

When children grow older, up to 14 years of age, they are more engaged in structured games, sports and educational games. However, all children do use their environment to resource play such as making puppets from plastic bottles, making kites, paying with stones; they also create optimum environments for play by stopping fights between children and create groups for playing with each other. At 14 years, girls were considered to be ready for marriage and boys for hard work.

For more details see the case study of Lebanon in this issue.

THAILAND The APC research took place in three migrant communities in Thailand, as follows.

Community in Mae Sot district in Tak province in northern Thailand comprising Burmese migrants in a rural setting. Being a rural community with relatively safe surroundings, children here are able to play with nature more than children in the city. It is however unsafe for them to go far from their community because they may be caught by the police (many workers were illegal) or enter unsafe gambling zones. Children thus create their own play opportunities in their everyday play spaces and creatively made toys and props with available loose parts. They also played traditional Burmese games that kept their native culture alive. Only in the rural Burmese community in this study were older adolescents seen to be still playing creatively using the affordances of their natural surroundings.

They run in the fields in rain; spin tops; played golf with an umbrella; made toys from waste such as flip-flops from a piece of wood with elastic bands for straps, boats for floating on water, toy banks from wood, toys from clay, kites and parachute from plastic bags, wooden windmills, clay bullets for a slingshot among others.

However, these adolescents too played on mobile phones, used Facebook and watched television like their counterparts in the other two communities.

Community in Muang district, Samut Prakan province comprising Burmese migrants in an urban setting belonging

apc synthesis to various ethnic groups such as Karen, Burmese and Tai Yai. They live around the fish dock and fish marketing areas but separately from and away from the general Thai community. The community inhabits pockets of flood prone land on the way to fish piers, and surrounded by a high-risk landscape dotted with abandoned buildings and dark swampy mangrove areas. Work hours of the community, who were employed by the fishing industry, were 8 pm to 4 am leaving children vulnerable at home at night. Various coping mechanisms have evolved including women taking turns to coordinate off days for watching over the children at night. Most children’s play involved exploring the many safe as well as unsafe places in their surroundings.

This community has also seen the most investment in creating safe play spaces for younger children through participatory processes initiated by the NGO, Foundation for Child Development.

Children seek and utilize environmental affordances in their surroundings through play, often transforming and transcending the possibilities through their imagination. For example, they refill plastic bottles with dirty water from the puddles or ponds and pull the bottles as if they were tow trucks. Among the three Thai communities, children (6-10 years) here engaged in the most diverse types of play spanning many play types.

Community in Phra Padaeng District of Samut Prakan province comprising Cambodian migrants in an urban setting in a port area next to the Chao Phraya River where sand loading and trading takes place. This is a mixed community of Thais and Cambodian migrant workers in a predominantly industrial area crowded with factories, and roads with heavy vehicular traffic including large transport trucks. There are over 1,000 Cambodian families who live in rented houses. Since most of them are illegal workers, they cannot go outside of the area. There is no playground in the community. Children play in front of their rented rooms in the narrow alleys.

Gambling exists in the community. Many games shops or games cafés have opened in the community in spite of a deep fear of the police.

Parents fear for their children while away at work and prohibit their children from playing far away from home. However, the more they are prohibited, the more children want to play in restricted areas.

They would sneak out to places such as construction sites and desolate warehouses.

They would jump into delivery trucks in the parking lot and run away for a while when adults turn up but come back again when the coast is clear.

Some of the children have no permission to leave the house at all and are locked up in the house when parents are away. But the boys who did get to play outside in this community played aggressively. They engaged in hitting each other, yelling, throwing stones at windows, shooting animals with slingshots and taking play things from neighbour’s homes without asking. Growing up in a harsh environment as an underclass in a different land, they have internalized the frustrations and anger that their community struggle with every day. Their risky aggressive way of playing is perhaps their way of coping and making sense of the violence embedded in their community, which they deem as unfair but are powerless to change.

For more details see the case study of Thailand in this issue.

Example of resilience: A six-year-old Burmese boy belonging to a large family of 10 had no access to school and being the youngest in the family stayed home with his old disabled parents while his older siblings went to work. He was not allowed to play far from their makeshift shack next to a dirt track in the rural Burmese migrant community.

The boy spent his days playing with trash around the house. If he wanted to play football fashioned one out of plastic bags.

But his favorite play activity is to make music with instruments he has created out of tin cans, glass bottles, old dishes and bowls. He plays music for extended periods of time. His father gave him chopsticks for beating his drums and made him a wooden box to keep them.

This made the child very happy.

INDIA The site of the APC research in India is a squatter settlement where people live

without any security of tenure and in abject poverty in an extremely hazardous environment. The squatters are located on either side of a railway track for the Circular Railway that encircles Kolkata. To the east of the squatters is the river Hooghly, a distributary of the river Ganges before entering the Bay of Bengal. This low-lying settlement is located in Ward No. 20 of Kolkata and is popularly known as Nimtala Ghat after the famous crematorium of the same name near the squatters, where 70-80 dead bodies are cremated daily.

Growing up barely three feet away from a busy rail track, and despite inadequate signaling for approaching trains and no information about the direction of the train on this single track, children and families consider the train track a lesser hazard than the river. The river is mighty and unpredictable particularly during a tidal bore when the sudden surge raises the water level with strong currents. Two children died in the river during the rainy season last year.

Being born into a situation of extreme economic, social, and physical environmental deprivation, children drop out of school, undertake paid and unpaid work from a young age, are often subjected to violence at home and the community, and due to the lack of any support to address the psychological stress of growing up in a hazardous physical environment with a high degree of social apathy and discrimination, children often resort to risk taking behaviour such as substance abuse and aggression on other children. In this situation of extreme everyday crisis, the only right that the children of Nimtola Ghat seems to enjoy is the right to play. The children accept the situation as normal despite high physical and social risks, and in spite of lack of access to formal play spaces are extremely creative in devising games using available resources and environmental affordances.

With little or no intervention from adults, children in this study were found to be very much in control of the time and manner of play. They exhibited enormous creativity and resilience in strategizing resource collection and manufacturing complex items to enable play in a harsh environmental context.

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apc synthesis The nature of play changes with the location: for example the road between the squatters and the river afford a flat surface and see a lot of top spinning competitions, cycling, playing with self-made wheeled toys, skipping etc; the tracks see a lot of pretend play, construction play, balancing on the rails and pulling of wheeled toys by young children who have no license to play far from the huts; and the river sees swimming, diving; collecting and playing with mud, coins and other loose parts collected from the river; pretend play especially by girls who come to wash clothes and utensils with their mothers and sisters on the stepped bank among others.

For more details see the case study of India in this issue.

Examples of resilience: By far the riskiest game the children play is on a raft, called trawler or “shola”, they make themselves for sailing on the river even during high tide. They have floating parties on the trawler and even crossover to the opposite bank. Even though going to the river is forbidden after dark, boys over 8 years often defy restrictions and play on their trawler at night. The trawler is made from the plastic mats used for laying dead bodies on the floor for rituals before the cremation and discarded afterwards. Children go to collect the mats from the crematorium in the late afternoon/early evening.

The mats are used for making the outer case of the trawler. Children use thermocol (styrofoam) pieces to fill the trawler, which they collect from two fish markets in Baghbazar and Howrah, about 1-2 km away. These collections happen early in the morning when fish mongers unpack fish and discard the styrofoam packing cases. The mat cases are flled with styrofoam pieces and sewn up. First children take the newly made trawler for a test run along the bank and only after a satisfactory run the trawler is taken farther into the river. Children also take great care to protect their trawlers and find suitable parking spaces where they can keep an eye as many adults are known to sail away on their trawlers at night to have parties.

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Attempts to promote the right to play in situations of crisis Across the different research contexts, attempts to promote right to play by different organizations can most notably be seen in Japan, Thailand and Lebanon.

Japan: Save the Children Japan built a Children’s Center called “Rights” using a participatory process involving children in Ishinomaki city. Participating children said that they wanted to have other places like the “Rights” center where they can gather for free and make new friends.

The children appreciated not only the pleasant physical settings offered by the center but also the role of the staff in creating a safe, child friendly and happy space for children to come together after the disaster.

The Japanese Adventure Playground Association supported local volunteer groups to set up temporary popup playgrounds. Eight adventure playgrounds were built in Ishinomaki City after the disaster. The Kamegamoriadventure playground was rebuilt near the temporary housing at the Nogawa River which housed a lot of displaced people in crowded quarters. Japan which already had a culture of moblie play (Play Car) activities, saw escalated mobilization of play cars after the disaster through the work of various nonprofit organizations (Rainbow Colour Crayons, Children and Youth Matching among others) and some support from the UNICEF National Committee in Japan. The Play Workers Association, a NPO, was established to manage play cars in three prefectures.

A two-day festival called Mini City Ishinomaki is held every year from 2012 after the disaster. Modelled after Mini-Munich which creates a Play City reflecting everyday life in a big city, Mini City Ishinomaki reclaims the abandoned city centre and recreates the city’s life but also offers a networking platform for all organizations working on rebuilding after the disaster.

Thailand: Foundation for Child Development (FCD), a Thai NGO, works on protecting the rights of migrant children. In Samut Prakan, FCD engaged in an action research project to promote right to play which

resulted in building a playground with the help of the community. For two years volunteers brought toys and sports equipment to the community and played with children. This helped to build trust in the NGO which then secured funds from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation and International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2013 to build a playground. Parents and children were asked to help in designing and building it. When the playground was finished, people in the community called it “Salor-Lukui-Sukretaw”, which is Karen language, meant “This Place Is the Best”.

This place is more than a safe playground for children; it is the first leisure and creative place for migrant children, and also a socialization space for parents. The community volunteers manage to keep the place safe and clean.

After the success of this project, the local management office gave permission to FCD to use another small piece of land, located on the other side of the road to create a learning centre and migrant cultural space. After it was built, youth use it to practice Myanmar or Karen dance, to play games, to cook their local food which is a vanishing practice, and to practice speaking Myanmar, Karen and Tai Yai languages in addition to using it for free play.

In the rural Burmese community adults in the community join in playing soccer, badminton or Sepak Takraw (traditional Burmese game). Adults helped to build a soccer field. In the urban Cambodian Community, part of the pavilion located in the Civil Protection Volunteers Office has been made into a play corner where children’s activities are organized by FCD with the support of a local Thai Community leader.

Among the two urban migrant communities in this study, the Burmese migrants seemed to have been more proactive in promoting access to play for children than the Cambodian migrants.

This may be due to the fact that Burmese migrants being the more dominant group (80% of all migrants in Thailand are Burmese) has longer and more established networks including with the development community. They also have strong leaders in their community. Together these factors have contributed to a greater

apc synthesis sense of community among the Burmese who are able to keep alive their cultural, traditional and religious practices, have connections with other Burmese migrant groups in other areas and remain connected to their home country. The community was able to secure some play infrastructure for their children in the barren urban context where they find work with the help of FCD. Lebanon: BEYOND Association has been working in the Syrian emergency context for the last four years providing vital healthcare and child protection services, psycho-social support, and recreational activities. It is one of the first NGOs working in that emergency situation to promote the access to play for children. Even though strict guidelines and protocols are followed while working with children in emergency which typically does not include right to play, BEYOND’s work stands out as they not only fulfill minimum standards guiding their child protection work but truly go beyond.

In some places, where the displaced camps were very crowded with no safe place for children to play, BEYOND Association rented land near the camps and created a safe zone for children’s play. When there was a fire in one of the Syrian displaced camps burning

down 75 tents, along with mobilized medical teams, BEYOND animators set up tents to create a safe place for children to play. First, the activities were focused on helping children overcome their fears and trauma, then children were encouraged to play, and gradually community outreach work led to the Syrian community facilitating children’s free play and even adults joining in to play with children.

right to play in Nepal, child clubs are not spaces where children can engage in free play. In India, the poor, illegal and disenfranchised squatter settlers in Kolkata had not received much attention from the development community and securing right to play depends very much on individual creativity and resilience of children and some parents who sometimes facilitate play by making play objects for children.

In Turkey and Nepal, the two other APC research contexts where there were available spaces for children, the children’s centers and child clubs respectively, promoting right to play was not a mandate though play does happen in these settings in varying degrees. The children’s centers in Turkey were more focused on homework and cultural activities through controlled adult facilitation; the child clubs in Nepal though created as platforms for securing children’s rights, are currently projectized by different organizations working with different agendas supporting the clubs to promote specific rights and to tackle issues such as child marriage, child labour, discrimination or hygiene.

Given the indivisibility of child rights, the right to play is as important and valid as any other right of the child but as no organization is actively promoting the

The myriad forms of play that were witnessed in these many different situations of crisis across the world speak to the capacity and resilience of children to overcome adversity, survive stress and rise above disadvantage. Situations where we saw the most access to play in the wider geographic area had:

• supportive adults (not saying ‘don’t play’ is a big support in most contexts) • spaces with rich environmental affordances with varying degrees of risk which children learned to manage • less restrictions on children’s time.

Under these conditions play emerged as a living resource and not a commodified product, a resource that allowed children to regain and retain normalcy under the most difficult and challenging living conditions.

References: Bull-Kamanga, L. et al. (2003). From everyday hazard to disasters: the accumulation of risk in urban areas. Environment and Urbanization 51(1), pp.

193–204 Cook, G. (1997). Language play, language learning. ELT Journal, 51, 224–231.

Humanitarian Coalition n.d. “What Is a Humanitarian Crisis”, Retrieved on 25 July 2017 from http://humanitariancoalition.ca/info-portal/factsheets/what-is-a-humanitarian-crisis Lepore, J. (2016). Baby Doe: A political history of tragedy. Annals of Child Welfare, February 1.

Lovell, E., & Masson, V. L. (2015). ODI Briefing - Target 2 (Number of people affected by disasters).

Lovell, E. and le Masson, V. (2014) ‘Equity and Inclusion in Disaster Risk Reduction: Building Resilience for All’. London: Climate and Development Knowledge Network and ODI. Ortiz, I., Daniels, L. M. & Engilbertsdóttir, S., 2012. Introduction. In: I. Ortiz, L. M. Daniels & S. Engilbertsdóttir, eds. Child Poverty and Inequality: New Perspectives. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Division of Policy and Practice, pp. 1-13.

Save the Children Norway. (2008). A Kit of Tools for Participatory Research and Evaluation with Children, Young People and Adults.

University of Brighton. (2014). Steps to Engaging Young Children in Research (Volume 2: The Researcher Toolkit) UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), General comment No. 17 (2013) on the right of the child to rest, leisure, play, recreational activities, cultural life and the arts (art. 31), 17 April 2013, CRC/C/GC/17, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/51ef9bcc4.html [accessed 8 August 2017] Wisner, B., Cannon, T., David, I. and Blakie, P. (2004). At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

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ca o pn c t se yn nt st h e s i s

A T R I B U T E T O

Dr Stuart Lester 19 October 1951 – 11 May 2017

Although this tribute has been compiled by Stuart’s close collaborator and friend, Wendy Russell, it incorporates some of the many messages received in the wake of his passing, making it co-authored and multi-voiced.

Stuart’s sudden and untimely death cut short his significant, highly original and very playful contributions to the local, national and international children’s play sector. The many messages we received after his passing talked about how Stuart had touched their lives, been an inspiration, and totally changed things for them. They spoke of his generosity of spirit and of his mischievous sparkle, his deep intellect and broad smile, and his capacity to challenge our thinking.

He was a quiet revolutionary, working as an advocate for children’s play in both academic and grass roots circles with organisations as diverse as local playwork organisations, the International Play Association, local and national governments, and the cultural sector.

Stuart was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, one of five children, growing up in a traditional post war council house. His brother Jeremy recalls Stuart’s enthusiasm for the games they played as children using whatever came to hand, and how his passion for playing outweighed any desire to win. In 1973 Stuart graduated with a BA (Hons) in Social Studies from Liverpool University and began a lifetime involvement in children’s play, working on adventure playgrounds in Liverpool and Manchester for over 20 years before moving into playwork training and then becoming Senior Lecturer in Play and Playwork at the University of Gloucestershire in 2005. Many have paid tribute to his skills as an educator who could juggle the incredibly complex and the wonderfully silly, opening up new ways of thinking about play. In 2014 his students nominated him for the award of ‘most inspiring lecturer’, and the picture here shows him with the award and with a smile that manages to convey pleasure at being valued in such a way, a touch of mockery of the system, and probably anticipation of the joys that a bottle of bubbly can bring.

My own collaboration with Stuart has been a journey of discovering ways to disturb and offer alternatives to dominant, comfortable and habitual ways of understanding children’s play and adults’ roles in supporting it. Key projects included a literature review for Play England aimed at updating the evidence on the value of play in order to inform the then developing English Play Strategy (Play for a Change, 2008); a concept paper for IPA to support the campaign for a General Comment on Article 31 of the UNCRC (Children’s Right to Play, 2010); research into the Welsh Government’s Play Sufficiency Duty (Leopard Skin Wellies, a Top Hat and a Vacuum Cleaner Hose, 2013); research on documenting spaces of an adventure playground (Co-creating an Adventure Playground, 2014); research on Sharing Memories of Adventure Playgrounds; and co-editing, with our colleague Hilary Smith, Practice-Based Research in Children’s Play (2017).

In recent years, Stuart developed an interest in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and in writings on post-humanism and new materialisms. Children’s play does not feature greatly in these works. Stuart was able to read small everyday moments of playing through these concepts and turn this into a whole other way of appreciating the value of the nonsense, ordinariness and triviality of play. It became an approach that he used in his work with students, policy makers, practitioners and others in playwork settings, local authorities and the cultural sector (museums, zoos, heritage sites).

Above all, Stuart was a family man, husband to Mary and father to Tom and Ben. Family members talk of his love of storytelling, particularly ‘The Oggle Goggle Box’, a story he told in instalments on large family holidays each evening before the children went to bed, building towards an ending eagerly anticipated by children and adults alike.

Stuart has left an almost-completed manuscript for a book, and in the concluding chapter he wrote If I ask myself ‘what is it that I have been doing all my life?’, the best response I can give would be to say, I have quite simply been ‘playing’.

The legacy of his playing lives on. We will remember him as someone with a fierce intellect and a gentle yet mischievous spirit, a lovely human being totally committed to advocating for children’s right to play.

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P L AY R I G H T S

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I PA W O R L D . O R G

I PA O r g a n i s a t i o n a l N e w s

IPA BUSINESS MEETINGS General Meeting 2017

The IPA General Meeting is being held at the conference venue at 4.00pm on 15 September at the TELUS Calgary Convention Centre, Calgary, Canada. At the General Meeting IPA members will elect the 2017-2020 IPA Board. Current Board members President Theresa Casey, Secretary Margaret Westwood and Treasurer David Yearley are standing down.

Uncontested nominations for the 2017-2020 Executive Board are: Robyn Monro-Miller, Australia, President; Kathy Wong, Hong Kong, VicePresident; Mike Greenaway, Wales, Treasurer; Cynthia Gentry, USA, Communications; Jonas Larsson, Sweden, Secretary. These members will be presented to the General Meeting for election.

Sudeshna Chatterjee, India, and Nik Dee Dahlström, Sweden, have both received nominations for Development Officer. Tam Baillie, Scotland; Bradley Roberts, USA; and Meynell Walters, England, have been nominated for the post of Membership Officer. The posts of Development and Membership Officers will be voted on at the General Meeting.

IPA Board and IPA Council

On Monday 11th September the last meeting of the 2014-2017 Board will be held in final preparation for the IPA workshops, events and other business at the 20th IPA Triennial Conference in Calgary. On Tuesday 12th September, and following the close of the conference, the full IPA Council of National Representatives meet to discuss any conference resolutions and IPA’s strategic direction. The newly elected Board will meet on Sunday 17th September to discuss the next term’s work.

XXI IPA World Triennial Conference, 2020

Final confirmations of intention to bid to Host the 2020 IPA World Conference were lodged with the IPA Secretary by 30 March 2017.

The 2020 Conference venue will be discussed by the IPA Council and announced at the General Meeting.

Members

Members are reminded that we need your most up-to-date contact details to ensure you receive PlayRights Magazine and the PlayNotes e-news.

Have you updated your membership details with your National Representative? Or why not do it online at www.ipaworld.wildapricot.org

SEPTEMBER 2017

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