Curious about the positive power of PLAY?

In the continuation of our two-part series, we explore the vital role of a playground as a tool for addressing the needs of not only children but potentially entire communities.

In light of harsh realities and formidable life obstacles, numerous children and their communities across the globe who have encountered distressing events can find it difficult to navigate to a place of restoration. This is where PLAY comes in!

For children, play can serve as a means to fulfill social, cognitive, physical, and relational needs – even as a form of therapy. As for adults, they can reap the ripple effects of an active playground by witnessing their child’s healthy development and growth, experiencing residual joy, and perhaps even taking pride in their involvement in constructing one with us!

This is the beautiful picture that KATW gets to be part of. Playgrounds can be more than just a fun place for a kid to spend a few minutes going down a slide to burn off energy. It can be a refuge of sorts. It can be associated with a safe space of joy as it lowers their anxiety and resistance to letting down their guard.

It can be a tool for coping. A tool to overcome. A tool for ushering in healing to those who interact with it.

Furthermore, we’ve seen our own team go as far as Sudan, Ukraine and Iraq in order to promote play in the lives of children coming from overwhelming circumstances. KATW’s staff member, Dan Liesik, shares in the video above of his time spent in Iraq ministering to the communities – the children – there through play. It’s in these beautiful scenes, captured by Jimmy Galt at galtvisual.com, that one can get the sense of how a playground – introducing unhindered play – can set the stage for a child, and perhaps even communities, to move towards post-trauma joy.

Pray with us that the joy of play will be used by the Lord to stir hearts anew and God will use the ministry of play to soften spirits and shed layers of trauma in the lives of children and even families. Play can “add” to the process of healing BUT God can “multiply” joy through its impact!

Thank you for supporting compassionate efforts to point others, who are hurting, to Him!