Playground
A space to explore public goods by Collabactors, trigger imagination, connect the dots and open up conversations. Click on the categories below to explore further.
Featured Content
India doesn’t need to fix childhood, it needs to see it. Bachpan is Gr8 turns big ideas into 8 everyday wonders—play, stories, nature, creativity, bonding, skills, education, quiet, care. No checklists. No pressure. Just noticing what already works. The world made big goals simple with icons—what if childhood’s abundance was the easiest goal we never noticed?
BM in a Box is a co-created playbook for joy and connection that helps communities host micro-events for children aged 0–8 the celebrate childhood. With simple activities, printables, stories, and facilitation tools, anyone can create child-led experiences in schools, anganwadis, parks, or neighbourhoods. Each event strengthens a citywide movement of care. Will you host one?
What does it really take for a child to feel safe, seen, and free to wonder? On May 23rd, over 150 people gathered in a 160-year-old school building in Bangalore to ask, and listen.
Bachpan Manao
What songs do families sing to their little ones across India? First Songs brings together lullabies in many languages—and invites you to listen, read, and share your own. Discover the quiet magic of early childhood at firstsongs.billionreaders.org.
Aastha Patel; Vibha Iyer; The Observation Project
What do we miss when we assume children are still learning — and not already teaching? Read more.
Devina; Mudito
Slate: a public resource for reflecting on childhood, care, and the spaces in between.
Dr. Jodi Pawluski
Explore a curated list of podcasts, articles, and research on how parenting reshapes the brain—covering maternal mental health, perinatal neuroscience, and the emotional realities of caregiving.
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Featured Articles
What does it really mean for a library to welcome every child? At The Shared Shelf, librarians and practitioners from across India came together to explore what inclusion in libraries looks like in practice through stories, accessibility, participation, and belonging. The keynote was delivered by Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta, Additional Chief Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, Government of Karnataka, and speakers included Namita Jacob, Jatin Lalit Singh, and Raviraj Shetty.
Rahul Aggarwal, Swatantra Talim
A child-led festival where arts, play, and community come together, Bulbule unfolds as a space shaped with children, not for them. Through making, storytelling, and shared experiences, it nurtures voice, confidence, and the quiet shift from participation to ownership.
At the Festival of Play in Hyderabad, Star Papaya created space for the BM8 Talks—short, story-led reflections on the Forgotten Language of Play. No advice, no checklists—just lived moments that invite adults to slow down, notice, and trust childhood. Come listen. Come unlearn. Come remember how play begins.
In a corner of Manotsava 2025, a small walkthrough space invited adults to do something rare: feel. Lock Worry, Unlock Joy, part of the Bachpan Manao Zone, offered a slow, sensory journey through worry, memory, and play. It asked nothing. Yet it stayed with many long after.
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Featured Tools
Learn how to make your own Children's Festival with this simple guide! A short reflection using Bulbule Festival 2025 as a case study to understand what it actually takes to put together a children’s festival. Looking at how space, people, materials, and simple setups come together, this piece breaks down the idea into something that feels practical, replicable, and already within reach for many communities.
Bachpan Manao
The Bachpan is Gr8 Toolkit is a joyful guide that helps parents, carers and communities celebrate childhood in everyday moments. Built around eight essential wonders of growing up, it offers simple, low cost activity ideas that support play, learning, creativity, connection and quiet reflection across early childhood.
Stories don’t begin on the page—they begin in the pit of your stomach. In this evocative guide, Pankaj Mishra invites us to stop manufacturing narratives and instead tune in to the moments that won’t let us go. If you’re looking to write stories that stay, start by listening.
Devina; Mudito
Slate: a public resource for reflecting on childhood, care, and the spaces in between.
Involve
Curious to know about how to make Peer Teaching and Peer Learning a reality in your school? Check out this pocket book to find out!
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Featured Conversations
Bachpan Manao
Bachpan Baithak: Investing in Childhood is the first issue of the Bachpan Baithak Archive, documenting reflections from a gathering of parents, educators, policymakers, funders, researchers, and practitioners at Makkala Hubba, Bengaluru’s citywide children’s festival. Through letters written to their future children in the imagined year 2050, participants reflected on what it truly means to invest in childhood—through time, care, environments, restraint, independence, and rethinking progress itself. This zine brings together those letters and the themes that emerged from them, moving the conversation beyond policy and into the everyday realities of care.
Hita Kumar
Why do fathers still remain on the margins of caregiving spaces, even when they are deeply present in their children’s everyday lives? This reflection from the Talk, Care, Play Symposium explores how fathers often participate through small moments like play and routine interactions, how identity and social narratives shape their engagement, and what it might mean to design programmes, technologies, and systems that recognise and build on the care that already exists.
Eight childhood essentials reveal what intelligent systems must protect carefully.
Technology shapes childhood environments; we must shape technology back carefully.
If play is a child’s right, shouldn’t their voices write the rules? Discover Voices of Play — where children are leading the way to a more joyful, playful world.
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Featured Research
A research report based on interviews with Individuals with disability, their caregivers and educational experts working in the sector to understand their experiences with inclusion - the challenges they face and the possibilities for changing this narrative.
Dr. Jodi Pawluski
Explore a curated list of podcasts, articles, and research on how parenting reshapes the brain—covering maternal mental health, perinatal neuroscience, and the emotional realities of caregiving.
Devina; Mudito
In a city that often overlooks its invisible workers, who notices how their children arrive—tired, hungry, hopeful? What does it take to make learning possible before the lessons even begin?
Reshma Bachwani, Illume
Illume’s research uncovers the layered realities of educating rescued children in shelter homes. It’s an invitation to raise the level of conversation—beyond access or literacy—towards healing, agency, and whole-child learning in the most adverse and diverse circumstances.
Gowda VK, Ravi Kumar CP, Goyal R, and Sidhwani S
This journal article examines the role of intuitive learning in early childhood and emphasizes the importance of integrating it into education to foster innovative thinking.
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Featured Projects
India doesn’t need to fix childhood, it needs to see it. Bachpan is Gr8 turns big ideas into 8 everyday wonders—play, stories, nature, creativity, bonding, skills, education, quiet, care. No checklists. No pressure. Just noticing what already works. The world made big goals simple with icons—what if childhood’s abundance was the easiest goal we never noticed?
India played more this year. Literally. From Anganwadi courtyards to kites, benches to buses, hospitals to cafes, Bachpan Manao with EkStep Foundation and NDTV brought unlikely voices together to say one thing: play is how children learn, connect, imagine, and grow. But here’s the real question - when was the last time you truly saw a child at play?
Bachpan Manao Masterclasses are 60-minute Zoom sessions where early childhood ideas come alive. You’ll hear from people doing the work - program implementers, teachers, researchers, professionals - sharing one sharp insight, real stories, and free tools you can use right away. Practical, human, and rooted in the first 8 years.
At Manotsava 2025, the Bachpan Manao Zone offered more than activities for children, it invited adults to remember. Over two days, it became a shared space where stories, play, art, and feeling unfolded without urgency. This reflection captures what that space held, and how it quietly stayed with us.
Makkala Hubba, supported by Bachpan Manao, turns Freedom Park into a sensorial world of play, wonder, and discovery for children and caregivers. Where childhood curiosity leads, learning follows. Step into joy, explore the unexpected, and celebrate play as essential. Join the movement—come play, create, and belong.
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