We encourage children to gain the skills they need to succeed in a changing world by providing a space and resources to play.  We design and build great playspaces to improve the learning, health and wellbeing of children in the developing world, and we support and train others to do the same.

That play is the tool children use to experiment with, and master how, the world works.  Classroom learning is important, but play is learning put into practice.   Play is fundamental to a child’s overall development and wellbeing. We believe that all children have the right to play and that all children deserve safe and fun places to do so.  The cornerstone of our core values comes from:

The UN Declaration on the rights of a child:

“The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavor to promote the enjoyment of this right.” (Principle 7)

UN Convention on the Rights of a Child (1989)

“You have the right to play and rest.” (Article 31)

“Your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities. It should also help you learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people.”  (Article 29)

Go Play! aims to:

• Give children access to creative inspiring playspaces to encourage ingenuity, creativity, imagination, problem solving and social skills. This is achieved through creating undirected, open-ended spaces for children to challenge and explore their world on their terms.

• Offer resources and training to teachers to assist local teachers to use playspaces in the most effective way.

• Promote the importance of education and educational facilities. Go Play! works in areas where the school facilities are usually very basic.  We build large, colorful, well-designed spaces, showing the local community that this school, and this playground are important.  The playgrounds become places of pride for the children and their parents, and have been shown to increase school attendance and engagement.

• Use a Community Development model: Go Play! works with volunteers from the community, parents, the school staff and the children themselves to build playspaces.   The act of organizing a playspace can become as important as the product itself.  It is our goal that the small act of building a community playspace can act as a catalyst for further positive action in the school and community.

• Leverage Technology: A rapidly growing part of our organization is the documentation of our work and leveraging the latest technology to spread that information in an ‘open source’ format with the world. (see www.playgroundideas.org)

As of Mid-December, GoPlay! is now officially tax deductable in Australia and the USA.

This is enabled through two different organisations that assist with the stringent reporting processes and auditing of Goplay! . If you would like to know more about these organisations please see below:

In Australia, we are Auspiced by World Relief Australia.

In the US, we have fiscal sponsorship through FJC

We would like to thanks both FJC and WRA for their support and we thankyou for your donation….

Please Click HERE to donate in any currency to help this important child centered work…

Goplay! is now fully tax deductable in Australia and the US. Please donate or for more information about how this work see here.

Goplay works with organisations and individuals all over the world to help them cater better to the needs of the children that they serve.

To donate, please click HERE and help us to provide these Playspaces for children worldwide that we in the west take so much for granted.

Most of us dont often think about having a place for children to play because we are so used to having places to play! Play for children is such a fundamental part of a childs life that we often take it for granted. Unfortunately, There are are children all over the world who have no safe place to play and many spend their time in vacant lots full of broken glass or dangerously close to roadsides or  in areas full of mosquitos putting them at risk of malaria and dengue fever. GoPlay is trying to change that in big and small ways.

Building safe, solid playgrounds that work in places where there is often no money and little emphasis on children is not always easy. Add to this, monsoon rains and searing heat. mix this with hundreds of children, full of energy playing on their playground everyday and you start to get an idea of what we are working with. Through all these challenges, Goplay works with all comers, we allow all of our ideas to be given freely so their children can play.

GoPlay has always had a strong value that westerners should not live off the money that is given to developing nations, and that is why we offer the chance to donate here. every week we recieve new emails from good hearted people wanting to build and we try to help them all. Currently, we have so many requests that we have had to start a waiting list to deal with them all. Your donations will help get the right people on board to do the training and spend the time to help these amazing people who give their time to plan and build some amazing spaces.

Please click HERE and help us to provide these Playspaces for children worldwide that we in the west take so much for granted.

Below are some comments from the people who we have or are helping. Please consider being generous so we can continue this important work.

“A friend is wanting to set up a playground at an orphanage in Chiang Mai that has over 1000 children, and has asked me to help with getting information, quotes, ideas etc. So my immediate thought was to contact you.”

Michelle

“It is great to hear about what you are pioneering, there is certainly a huge need.”

Rachel Bentley,  founder and director , Children on the Edge NGO

“We’ve only built one playground thus far.  We have two volunteers interested in building playgrounds at their site. ….. Building the playground was a lot of fun.  I think some of the community members weren’t as interested in the safety measures GoPlay! takes, but I was still very pleased with the results…”

Cameron Miller, Peace corps volunteer

“Thank your for your appreciation of our playground designs in Mexico. I looked at your designs and website and am likewise very impressed with the playgrounds and toys you are building for refugee and migrant schools on the Thai-Burma border. Your approach and ours indeed have a lot in common.”

David Werner, Nothing about us without us. Veteran of developing world playgrounds for children with disabilities

“In the last few days, I was doing my research on the web and I found “playgroundideas” site. I like it very much -no plastic, finally.  Most of playgrounds (in Bangkok) I have seen/visited so far are indoor playgrounds using toys that made of plastic. Personally, I don’t feel/right seeing kids playing with plastic toys.

In Bangkok, there are very few outdoor playgrounds, parks, a quality place where children can go to play or to learn. It made me think whether it is possible to build one on my own.”

Chalisa Nuhong, concerned Bangkok resident

“I have found Marcus’ work inspirational and what I like is that it is done with the community not for the community and the ‘bang for buck’ is truly amazing when you see what some of the other organisations are doing here in terms of cost vs output…”

Penny Thame, Education Development Coordinator ZOA INGO

“I have had a look at your photos and love the things you are doing – wonderful colours and ideas.”

Hattie Coppard, Snug Playground, www.snugplay.co.uk

“Your ideas are excellent.  I will show them to my friends in Africa and consider ‘enhancing’ one of the school playgrounds that we work with.

Ben Markham,  Empower playgrounds

“Really cant tell you how much i have just enjoyed looking at all your pictures. I love just how many tyres you guys have managed to fit into each playground! Its truely brilliant, the structures you have come up with are fantastic.”

Tom Gill Director, East Africa playgrounds

Please Click HERE to donate in any currency to help this important child centered work…

“Play is an essential and integral part of all children’s healthy growth, development, and learning.  Play is a dynamic process that develops and changes as it becomes increasingly more varied and complex. It is considered a key facilitator for learning and development across domains, and reflects the social and cultural contexts in which children live”. (Isenberg, Quisenberry, 2002)

Play is a powerful instinct children are born with to assist in their survival and success.  Through self-guided, free play, it has been shown that children will naturally learn to walk, talk, read, write, problem solve, and deal with conflict.  It has also been suggested that the absence of play can hinder the development of healthy and creative individuals.  Across the sciences, from psychoanalysts to neuroscientists, it is believed that play is necessary for learning everything from how to socialize to developing emotional and physical health.
See more in our research section.

Below are two fantastic TED talks about the importance of play.

These 2 videos serve to explain the fundamental importance of play for children and adults in all its forms.

Stuart Brown and Scott Eberle have both come to understand the importance of play from 2 very different angles but both share a passion and desire to see play valued by society as a ancient tool used by humans and animals for so many essential purposes.

References:

Isenberg, Joan Packer &  Quisenberry, Nancy. “Play: Essential for All Children. A Position Paper of the Association for Childhood Education International” 2002;  13 May 2010.  Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI)  <http://www.udel.edu/bateman/acei/playpaper.htm>

“We don’t believe what we know”

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

When the playground people started building we had a strong, specific focus on sustainability. One, because reused and recycled products work out cheaper and two, because we had to start believing what we know.

We know the world in which we live is changing because of our behavior, population growth and lifestyles.  We know all the factors that contribute to damaging our fragile earth and we know time is running out to make the changes we need to reverse the damage already caused.  Climate change is real and this is enough for us to start to make a change (and if you’re a climate change skeptic that’s fine, there are plenty of other reasons to stop polluting the place we live in.)

Our materials are simple, locally sourced, sustainable or recycled/reused.

Tires are free, plentiful, soft and safe. We have re-cycled between 100-200 per playground, this is over 3000 tires not burned or turned into landfill.

Cement is an extremely high-embodied energy product and we try to minimise its use wherever we can.

The timber we use is a fast growing eucalypt pole mainly used for scaffolding construction here. If we use teak it is reclaimed from old buildings. Hardwoods in South -East Asia (particularly teak) are either illegally cut from old growth forests here in Thailand, or is part of the sad and destructive deforestation inside Burma that part-funds the regime there.

We do not own a car or an office, we ride bicycles when we work close to town and ride motorbike when it’s further.  We work closely with other education organisations and through them we borrow a car when we need to transport our tools to the new site or work at a remote school with difficult access.  We use low energy laptops and we work and meet in local cafes and restaurants (instead of a separate office) putting our money into the local economy. All this has a much smaller environmental footprint and at the same time keeps us fit and healthy and more connected with the community.

Meet the people behind Go Play!…

Marcus Veerman (Founder/Executive Director)

Marcus is a teacher, counselor and ‘jack of all trades’ from Australia with 6 years experience teaching children in the outdoors, and 4 years working with teenagers from Handsonlearning to build classrooms and furniture for their local schools and communities.  With a focus on experiential education, mentoring and hands on learning, Marcus landed in Thailand looking for a place to use his skills. Go Play! began from a simple request of a principal asking for help to build a playground. After 2 years he has now designed, built and overseen the construction of 45 playgrounds and assisted others to do the same.

Jon Racek (Managing Director)

Jon Racek is an architect from the United States, currently based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  He founded and ran an educational outreach program in the inner-city Los Angeles, CA and acted as Design Director to a design/build organization in Boston, MA.  He also ran an award-winning architecture and design firm whose work appeared in numerous magazines including The New York Times and TIME Magazine.

Tha Wah (Thailand)

Tha Wah has worked with the Go Play! project almost since it’s beginning. He has built almost 40 playgrounds in the last two and a half years. He is a builder, translator, manager, volunteer coordinator and everything else in-between.  He is now employed full time with a local Thai NGO ‘Childsdream’ and will build around 30 more playgrounds in the schools they oversee in Northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Tha Wah is a great friend of GoPlay and still helps advise us from time to time about local issues in thailand and surrounds.

I am a teacher and I love to experiment with design and play. Two years ago when I arrived in Mae Sot, I came with the idea of building good classrooms that facilitated the learning process.  It became apparent very quickly that classrooms were not the real need here, but instead getting the children out of them!

The norm here is for children to spend up to 6 hours a day doing call-and -response and copying the teacher. The affect I believe, is a lesser ability to be creative, to problem solve and to analyze or explore alternatives (see our philosophy for more info on this).

These skills are very dear to me… so encouraging play is my attempt to give students a free space to explore and experiment, to create and experience the world.  Our playgrounds have always had a focus around interaction, cooperation, experimentation, and imagination.

I hope you get a lot out of this body of work and many children and communities become better places as a result.

-Marcus Veerman

Based on close observations of four young children, I have garnered some conclusions on the allure of dirt.
Dirt is a living substance through which young children not only explore, but actively shape the world they inhabit. There are hidden treasures to be uncovered, such as a worms and the roots of plants. And like worms, in the course of dirt play children create moments in space and time that are ephemeral and secondary to their aim, which is mainly to move through the dirt, with fingers or shovels or sticks, but which serve a vibrant role in the larger ecosystem.  By traversing through dirt, worms aerate and fertilize the soil as a byproduct of tunneling, children similarly engender positive social interaction through the seemingly natural inclination to join forces in an effort to build ever more complex, more meaningful space.

In urban areas, children are often denied the opportunity to shape their physical environment. Although post-industrialized cities frequently feature child-centric infrastructure, particularly accessible to the progeny of the socioeconomically privileged, such manufactured environments are often entirely predetermined by adults, whose influence is cemented through the physical stasis of their elements. Frequently, the only method a child has for physically influencing an urban child-centric environment is through seemingly destructive acts: to exercise one’s creative voice in the parameters of designed permanence in effect requires acts of vandalism.

Dirt, uninhibited by the defining influence of manicured plantings, enables the rare opportunity in the urban child’s existence to actively participate in the creation of their physical space, if only momentarily. Dirt play provides agency for young children–the choice to build a hill and destroy it lies temporarily within their empowered domain. Through the experience of inhabiting physically autonomous space, dirt play aids children in the conceptualization of the inherent limitations of power by demonstrating that existence as the controlling authority does not translate into total control of a situation.

Unlike toys manufactured for sturdiness, creations engineered in dirt are fragile and often unpredictable. Children primarily experience the world as an arena that adults control, and as a result often conceptualize adult authority as absolute. Through inhabiting the role of the autonomous being, playing with dirt enables an understanding that the authoritarian power structures that dominate children’s daily existence are specious, necessarily propped up by unrevealed support.
An urban child armed with a shovel is empowered to interact with the world on his or her own terms, if only provided the opportunity of dirt.