Cotlands and Book Dash join forces to celebrate World Play Day
Let us come together to motivate the next wave of powerful South African readers and learners.
Cotlands, one of the leading NPOs dedicated to early childhood development (ECD), is thrilled to announce its collaboration with Book Dash, a non-profit, social impact publisher, for this year’s World Play Day on May 28.
The joint initiative aims to inspire children, young adults, parents, and teachers across South Africa to engage in reading and play activities that are both fun and educational.
Cotlands has invited ECD centres and pre-schools to join them in promoting the joy and importance of play for all children in South Africa. They are delighted to share that they have 69 pledges from ECDs and 11 from parents and a total of 4 192 children set to engage in their play activities on this special day.
Their dedicated toy librarians are visiting ECD centres nationwide, encouraging participation and spreading awareness about their initiatives. The target is to reach over 20 000 young children and make World Play Day a memorable and impactful event for children nationwide.
“At Cotlands, we believe that learning is most effective when it’s enjoyable,” said the acting CEO at Cotlands, Nozizwe DladlaQwabe.
Their collaboration with Book Dash aims to make this World Play Day a fun and engaging experience, laying the foundation for a lifelong love of learning.
Their vision is to see children thrive in their formative years and their mission is to increase access to play-based learning opportunities for vulnerable children through our toy library programme, equipped with a wide range of educational toys to develop children holistically.
These libraries also contain books from Book Dash, stories with a local South African flavour that are easily relatable to children.
Additionally, they have launched a World Play Day padel tournament on May 30 that offers a fun and exciting way for corporate teams to support their mission and help them raise funds for much-needed resources to enrich their toy libraries.
By taking the pledge on cotlands.org and filling in the ‘Pledge Play Form,’ participants will receive free ebooks, play activities, and learning materials developed by local experts.
These resources include locally crafted storybooks available in multiple official languages and a variety of play activities based on the extensive experience of the Cotlands team.
Book Dash, with its vision that “Every child should own a hundred books by the age of five,” has been instrumental in promoting early years book ownership.
Since 2014, Book Dash has distributed close to four million books to children, addressing the limited access to children’s books and supporting families in achieving their full potential. “Books are not just for learning; they’re for playing too,” said Julia Norrish, executive director at Book Dash.
