Cotlands is advocating for children’s rights and responsibilities on Human Rights Day. The importance of providing ALL young children in South Africa with access to play based learning opportunities is a child’s right, as it helps with their cognitive development during the foundation phase of learning. This vital phase maps out the future path for how well a child will cope in school; emotionally, socially and academically.
South Africa’s constitution is an advanced one that we can all be proud of. One of the many rights that our children have under Section 28 is the right for children to not have their well-being, education, physical or mental health, spiritual, moral or social development placed at risk through any service. Between the ages of 0-3, 80% of a child’s brain develops. In South Africa, we have a startling 4 million children that live in the poorest of households with limited access to play based learning opportunities. This is a large number of children that risk losing out on building a good early learning foundation due to inadequate services.
Cotlands CEO, Dr. Monica Stach, comments: “It is vital for us to equip South Africa’s future generations with the required learning opportunities to stimulate their minds so that their neural architecture develops to their best potential. At Cotlands we believe every child has the right to access play-based learning opportunities and we are dedicated to closing this learning gap and to see our children thrive in their formative years.”
World Play Day (WPD) is celebrated annually on the 28 May and it raises awareness for the importance of play across the world in over 30 countries. Each year this important day has a theme and this year’s theme is “Play is a right”. We would like to promote this theme today as the concept of “PLAY” has many benefits that improve our rights and society. Play helps us advocate for the right to connect, have fun, explore, collaborate, learn and be creative. For more information on WPD you can visit the Toy Library Association of South Africa’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TLASA.official/
As Human Rights Day is an important day for all South Africans to reflect on our historic actions and fight for the rights of humans, this is an opportunity for our people that have had the advantage of early learning to give back to vulnerable children by helping Cotlands implement more toy libraries and playgroups in marginalized communities , visit www.cotlands.org.za and please donate.