Play it Forward

Play it Forward is a new non-profit in the South Florida area with the goal of establishing a free toy library system in which families from the community donate gently used toys and other families are able to check out those toys for free to increase child access to high-quality play.

In the South Florida area, the significant gap in income between wealthy and low-income families hits children hard. Living in poverty, children are prone to falling behind their peers as early as kindergarten due to a lack of access to developmentally stimulating activities and/or interactions. Child play, particularly facilitated and joined by an adult, holds powerful potential to teach many areas that prepare children for learning and later life, including problem-solving, conflict negotiation, fine motor skills, frustration tolerance, and many, many more. Increasing access to toys and play has the potential to improve child behavior and language, and often increase problem-solving and emotion regulation capacity.

Since its founding earlier this year, Play it Forward has been collecting and cataloguing gently used toys, creating a plan for implementation, recruiting and educating volunteers, and consulting with toy library founders around the country to determine the best model of toy library to establish in the south Florida area to reach the greatest number of families. We have additionally been working with community partners to brainstorm the best models for getting the donated toys into the greatest number of hands. Our goal for our first year as an established non-profit is to establish a base for toy distribution and to get the first toys into the hands of the children in the community.