Playing to learn

Classrooms in Nepal still follow orthodox instruction methods where teachers spoon-feeds information, encourage memorisation for exams and discourage questioning.

Students then become docile and are not motivated to think out of the box.

A Kathmandu-based organisation is set to change that. Fun Play Learn works with schools in Kathmandu Valley to make learning especially science and maths fun and accessible through interactive sessions.

The non-profit has 580 volunteers who visit 65 poorly-resourced local schools, most of them government run, in Koteswor, Baneswor, Chapagaun, Mahalaxmi, Lalitpur, and Basantapur reaching more than 8,100 students every week.

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Fun Play Learn was set up last year by Abhay Puri who previously worked at the Indian education NGO Pratham, and Sakar Pudasaini of the Kathmandu-based Karkhana to improve the quality of instruction and the education system in Nepal and the region.

Puri is an Indian tech professional formerly with Google in Silicon Valley who is invested in making learning fun and accessible. He says, “Spending on education is the most optimal way to get a high payback for a nation.”

Puri himself was not the brightest students before left for the US for higher studies. What he had was a lot of curiosity and questions, but the conventional education system didn’t encourage those qualities, especially if a student fails exams.  

So for the past two decades, Puri has dedicated himself to making education more accessible and learning more for fun so that children like him would be interested in instructions. He chose Nepal because it shares many cultural as well as education system similarities with India.

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The key is to introduce and implement various kinds of games relevant to their instruction. Explains Puri: “Discipline often squelches your learning. It was a waste to not use play for children because playing allows children to be focused, passionate, and curious.”

Puri likens his method to that of learning in the pre-industrial world. “I’d like my children to play with real mud, real pots and pans. See how cement is made,” he adds. “Learning is a continuous process of experimenting and failing. The community should provide a vehicle to do that.”

Fun Play Learn uses a range of creative practices to integrate fun. During one of the sessions recently at a local school, volunteers passed around a pre-made origami fish and gave the children time to be creative with sheets of paper. Sure enough, the children immediately copied the complex folds to make their own paper fish.

“Our methods are unorthodox, as we do not tell children how to do something. We act just as children and encourage them to ask questions so that they navigate the game along with us,” says team lead Ravi Timsina, adding that they are not trying to teach something entirely new but get children curious and excited.

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Fun Play Learn also trains local volunteers to become leaders, a grassroots organisation that encourages young people to take agency over the change they wish to make. Individual volunteers, their unique way of dealing with children, and their personal motivations are emphasised.

One of their volunteers in the Anamnagar area is Payal Agrawal, a third-year Bachelor in Social Work student. She joined Fun Play Learn to utilise the time she would have otherwise wasted by procrastinating at home.

She says: “Interacting with the kids and seeing them focused, independent, and curious gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment.”

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