A place to stimulate young minds

Housewives help teach children how to play the games and have fun at the toy library.

A FIRST-of-its-kind community toy library in Damansara Damai, Petaling Jaya is the pride of Apartment Idaman residents.

Residents worked together with Toy Libraries Malaysia and several donors to build the library to benefit children living in the 2,468 units of low-cost flats.

To get the initiative moving, 22 homemakers from the community were trained under the Kursus Asuhan Permata Taska Rumah on ways to conduct mind simulation games for children below 12.

The library also serves as a platform for homemakers who care for their neighbours’ children to conduct fun, mind-stimulating games, said Toy Libraries Malaysia chief play advocate Datin P.H. Wong.

“Based on our survey, out of the 30 homemakers here, 25 are babysitters who care for their neighbour’s children to earn extra income.

“However, these babysitters do not hold play activities which are important for a child’s mental development.

“The toy library project allows babysitters to bring their neighbours’ children for activities,” said Wong, who has been in the childcare sector for more than 30 years.

Housewives are coached on activities they can teach children at the toy library such as making toys using recycled materials, making play dough and mathematical games. 

She identified the neighbourhood for the project because of residents’ achievements and their good team spirit, saying the neighbourhood was the first of its kind to build its own toy library.

Residents, Wong said, received help from social enterprise Extraordinary People Impacting Community (Epic) who taught them how to build the library.

The residents also helped secure shelves and toys from Ikea.

“This neighbourhood emerged champion and runner-up several times against other residents associations at the annual PJ Sustainable Community Award by Petaling Jaya City Council.

“I was among the judges in

some of the competitions. I was impressed with their proactive measures.

“In fact, they were like PPR Lembah Subang with a lot of problems about 10 years ago, such as indiscriminate rubbish dumping and abandoned vehicles.

Toys and other interactive learning material in the toy library.

“However, they had a vocational teacher who became their leader. He managed to bring residents together,” said Wong, who decided to work with the community this year to kick-start the toy library project.

She said the community also contributed RM13,000 from its funds to fence up the area and carry out beautification works.

“We will also focus on activities such as drawing to cultivate creativity compared to colouring printed pictures. Drawing is also the first step to writing.

“We want to add canvases, have sensory walls and musical walls featuring unwanted pots and pans for kids to play with outside the library,” Wong added.

Trainer Jameyah Sherif was among those who coached the homemakers on activities for children.

“We teach them ways to make toys using recycled materials, how to make play dough using flour, and mathematical games.

“A lot of games can be created from the items around us,” she said.

Jameyah hopes to create a positive learning journey for the children as this also helped with character building.

“Maybe someday when these children grow older, they can take care of the library and train others,” she said.

The mothers are also trained in aspects of nutrition, cleanliness, finance and management.

Apartment Idaman’s Residents Association committee member Ziarat Khan Guldad said there were 10,000 residents in the area.

A story-telling session a the toy library in Apartment Idaman, Damansara Damai. 

“We have engineers as well as labourers living here but we work together for the betterment of the community. In the future, we also hope to expand this place and have more toys for the children.

“The fathers are usually working in the day and are busy on weekdays so we help out with whatever needed at night and on the weekends. We help paint the place and do things that are labour intensive,” said Ziarat.

Wong said from her experience, toys were able to cut across barriers among children and even adults.

The powerful aspect of toys, she said, was that they helped build relationship and trust.

“Toys help attract children of all backgrounds and children from low-cost areas lack space to play in. “Toy libraries are an option for them,” she added.

During a recent visit to a People’s Housing Project flat in Kota Damansara, Wong was shocked to meet a mother who had left her three-year-old to care for an infant sibling.

“The mother was downstairs talking to us and I wanted to see her unit. To my surprise, I saw that she had left her three-year-old to watch over the baby who was asleep in the sarong cradle.

“The mother said it was just for awhile but this should not be the case.

“When we have more safe spaces such as toy libraries, the children can be left with residents who are trained to handle them instead of leaving them home alone,” said Wong.