Playing to Learn: Discover PLAY International’s Educational Approach in Cambodia
PLAY International (PLAY) is a French NGO convinced that social challenges can be addressed through sport. Since 1999, PLAY has been using sport as a lever for education, development, and social inclusion. Since its creation, PLAY has implemented educational and humanitarian projects in over 20 countries, benefiting more than 1,000,000 children and 18,000 professionals.
In Cambodia, access to quality education remains limited. Public schools, with classes averaging 80 pupils, focus on a lecture-based approach that does not meet children’s individual needs. As a result, many pupils struggle to keep up and fall behind. Many leave school without mastering fundamental skills, which limits them to poorly paid and sometimes dangerous jobs.
Operating in France, Kosovo, Burundi, Senegal, Comoros, and Rwanda, PLAY International has also extended its reach into Asia through a partnership with Enfants d’Asie. Together, PLAY and Enfants d’Asie aim to enhance the acquisition of fundamental skills for children in their centres by employing games and sport as engaging learning tools, thereby complementing and reinforcing traditional public school education.
“Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for the future of this program in Cambodia? How do you envision it evolving and expanding to reach even more children and create a lasting impact on the community?”
PLAY’s operating model is designed to ensure a lasting impact on communities.
- Field diagnosis with local experts
Field diagnosis with local experts is a prerequisite for any deployment. It consists of a survey, the compilation of data and a summary of the meetings held. This approach enables us to create relevant and effective content and guarantee the efficiency of the proposed solutions. Moreover, it helps identify the most motivated participants, who are more likely to engage fully and amplify the program’s impact.
- Creation of sports games sessions with experts and training of professionals
The sports games sessions are designed on site in collaboration with local experts to meet the specific needs of the children in Cambodia. The project’s key beneficiaries—local professionals—receive training to implement and deploy the activities. This guarantees a long-term impact by ensuring their autonomy in organizing and conducting sessions repeatedly over the years. Furthermore, they can transmit their knowledge to colleagues, expanding the program’s reach and ensuring its continued success.
- Deployment of the project
The project will impact the children with the sports play sessions organized by the trained professional. This will help the children to enhance their skills in mathematics, while promoting core values like cooperation, well-being, and communication.
Moreover, professionals benefit from ongoing support, either face-to-face or remotely, throughout the deployment process. This includes practical advice, capitalizing on feedback and adaptations to improve the effectiveness of the games.
At the end, the project aims at training 25 professionals and impacting more than 500 children. However, in the long term, the number of children impacted will increase, by using again and again the pedagogical contents over the years.
“Can you share some examples of the impact of similar programs and how it positively affects the local community?
PLAY is an expert in implementing education programs to children through sports.
Counting, Reading & Writing: The Counting, Reading & Writing project is a major education through sport project, deployed since 2023 in Senegal and Burundi. The aim of the project is to improve the learning of basic skills by pupils in Senegal and Burundi, using sport as a learning tool. The project focuses on teachers training and the integration of sport into the learning of mathematics, reading and writing. This innovative teaching method using sports games offers teachers the opportunity to work differently on fundamental knowledge, while helping children with difficulties (for whom conventional learning methods are not completely satisfactory). Since its inception, 120 teachers have been trained, impacting 7,000 children.
Let’s PLAY Maths: This project addresses the challenges faced by schools in teaching basic skills, particularly mathematics, in primary education. The primary motivation for this initiative is to equip teachers and school professionals with the tools they need to teach mathematics to children aged 6 to 9. Ultimately, the aim of the project is to promote the well-being of both teachers and pupils through these new pedagogical tools. Let’s PLAY Maths also aims to break down the barriers faces by pupils and offer them an innovative and more attractive way of learning through sports activities. This project operates in schools in 4 countries: France, Romania, Kosovo and Northern Macedonia. Since its implementation in 2024, the project has trained 130 teachers, impacting more than 2,600 children.
Learn more about PLAY International’s impactful work and their innovative programmes by visiting their website: https://www.play-international.org/en.
To support their mission of transforming lives and improving children’s education through sport, please consider making a donation to their impactful programmes.
