From 7 to 11 April 2019, IICBA participated in a capacity-building training on learning through play for early childhood care and education teachers and teacher educators in Mombassa, Kenya. The training was organized by Education International (EI), the Kenyan National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and the Danish Youth and Child Association (BUPL). There were around 30 participants in total, including Dr. Binyam Sisay, IICBA Project Officer, who took part in the training workshop as a resource person.

The four-day training was facilitated by experts from BUPL and the Nigerian National Union of Teachers, with EI and IICBA as resource persons. The learning through play workshop design was very interactive and had several hands-on activities. It trained participants on the central role of play in teaching pre-school teachers and on the use of simple and locally available materials to produce teaching/playing materials. For example, photographed below are some of the dolls and play items that participants made from recycled materials, such as water bottles and scraps of fabric, during the workshop.

The training workshop was highly innovative and very relevant to the context in Africa. There is a lot of potential for scalability to many other African countries. Accordingly, EI, IICBA, BUPL and KNUT are currently working together to develop a proposal and find potential funding for a continued and larger initiative.

IICBA and EI jointly coordinate the Teacher Development Cluster of the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) 2016–2025 of the African Union Commission, and IICBA regularly works to improve the quality of learning by investing in teachers. The workshop offered IICBA an opportunity to explore areas of future collaboration between the partner organizations.