Thriving Through Play Community of Practice

Welcome to the Thriving Through Play (TTP) Community of Practice!

Introduction

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) serves as the learning partner for the Thriving Through Play (TTP) Community of Practice (CoP), a LEGO Foundation initiative that brings together implementers to explore effective ways of using play to support children’s mental health and social-emotional well-being. In this role, IPA does not implement programming directly, but facilitates learning, reflection, and evidence use across partners. IPA brings a unique set of strengths to this role. Through its Right-Fit Evidence Unit, IPA supports organizations to design monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems that generate actionable insights and inform data-driven decision-making. This work is complemented by technical expertise from sector specialists in Education and Peace & Recovery, as well as IPA’s country office presence, which enables close collaboration with implementing partners and deep engagement with local contexts.

The Thriving Through Play initiative responds to a growing body of evidence showing that adverse childhood experiences can undermine children’s social-emotional development, mental health, and ability to learn and regulate emotions. Play-based interventions offer a promising pathway for building resilience among children affected by adversity, and TTP builds on the LEGO Foundation’s longstanding commitment to supporting children’s growth and well-being through play.

In scoping the initiative, the Foundation consulted organizations working in crisis-affected contexts and heard a consistent message: partners value collaborative spaces to share best practices and learn from one another, spaces where competition for funding does not impede cross-organizational learning. The TTP Community of Practice responds directly to this need. Building on lessons from previous LEGO Foundation initiatives, TTP brings together five implementers and one learning partner committed to strengthening mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) for children affected by conflict. IPA’s Right-Fit Evidence Unit leads this effort, drawing on its experience facilitating Communities of Practice and supporting partners through iterative program refinement (see more examples of our learning partnerships here), including prior collaboration with the LEGO Foundation on play-based education initiatives in refugee settings.

Photos: Staff from Right to Play (left) and AMREF (right) participating in the Thriving Through Play Community of Practice kick-off convening, discussing shared learning questions facilitated by IPA's Right-Fit Evidence Unit. © 2025 Amelie Loro

TTP cohort members implement programs integrating play into existing approaches, working through networks of local, national, and global organizations to create impact at scale. The five implementing partners include:

Amna - partnering with 10 local organizations across Lebanon to deliver Baytna, a trauma and identity informed play-based program that supports children and caregivers to heal, build resilience, and lessen the physical and psychological effects of conflict and displacement.
Amref - implementing the Tucheze Tustawi Project to support children aged 0–3 in refugee and host communities in Turkana and Nairobi. The program integrates play-based psychosocial support into primary healthcare systems and promotes play-based practices through community approaches with caregivers and early childhood centers.
Global Fund for Children - supporting 20 community-based organizations in Kenya and Uganda that promote mental health and psychosocial support for children in refugee and host communities, helping them build resilience, well-being, and opportunities to thrive.
Right to Play - implementing a play-based psychosocial support program that partners with parent educators, early childhood centers, and primary schools to strengthen the capacity of caregivers and educators to support the well-being of children and preparing families for the critical transition from pre-primary to primary school in refugee and host communities in West Nile, Uganda.
War Child Alliance - scaling up proven play-based MHPSS program TeamUp, working through networks of global organizations and their local partners to create impact at scale.

The TTP Community of Practice is designed drawing on IPA's Right-Fit Evidence Unit synthesis of nine learning-oriented Communities of Practice, which identified five building blocks for effective collaborative learning: clear goals, the right foundations, balanced roles and leadership, meaningful participation, and the right formats. The CoP is structured around a theory of change with three interconnected workstreams: producing and sharing actionable knowledge with implementing partners inside and outside the Community of Practice; building capacity for right-fit monitoring and evaluation; and policy advocacy for MHPSS with donors and policymakers. Together, these workstreams are guided by a shared learning agenda developed collaboratively with partners. This agenda addresses critical knowledge gaps in the field while generating practical, actionable insights that implementers can use to strengthen and adapt their programs.

This webpage will continue to evolve as we learn together. Over the next two years, we will develop and share resources, practical strategies, and tested tools emerging from our collective work, alongside updates from conferences and public events where we present our findings. Whether you are an implementer or a funder, this Community of Practice offers a platform for accessing actionable evidence to strengthen play-based programs in conflict-affected settings.