Inside the "play labs" helping refugee kids heal | Erum Mariam

0:02You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. A heads up before we start, this episode includes discussion of genocide and violence against children. Please take care in deciding whether and when to listen. In 2017, more than 800 ,000 Rohingya people fled genocide in Myanmar, crowding into sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh. Many were children who had seen things no child ever should. Educational leader Arum Mariam has spent three decades bringing play to children in crisis through the BRAC Institute of Educational Development, one of the world's largest nonprofits based in Bangladesh.

0:47So when she got the call to visit one of these camps, she went, hoping to help these children heal. She learned something unexpected. The children had never seen these camps before. They didn't know the rules. They didn't speak the language. Even the adult facilitators didn't know how to play. They were arranging the scrabble tiles into patterns because that's what made sense to them. Standing there, I thought, there's got to be a better way. In her talk, Irum shares what she learned, that it wasn't enough just to give these children something to play with. It had to be play they recognized. Working with her team, she built what she calls the Humanitarian Play Lab, space is designed by the Rohingya community itself, filled with the games, rhymes, and art the children remembered from home.

1:34It was specifically play from their own Rohingya culture that helped them feel pride, gain confidence, and experience joy after being violently forced to leave behind their home. Irum introduces us to several of the kids whose lives these play labs changed. More than 50 ,000 children so far. And she makes the case that every child deserves the right to play their own play. That's coming up right after a short break.

2:25Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. member FDIC.

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5:04And now, our TED Talk of the day. In August 2017, the genocide in Myanmar had exploded overnight. The military were killing Rohingya people, setting their villages on fire. This was part of the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people. The women and men who had escaped were now flooding across the border, carrying infants and young children on their back. Within four months, over 850 ,000 people crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh in a town called Cox's Bazar. I am Bangladeshi and I live in Dhaka. I have spent my career working to make sure children have access to play when everything else in their lives has been in chaos.

5:48I have worked with children for over three decades now through BRAC, the world's largest NGO. While the Rohingya refugees were arriving by the thousand in Bangladesh, I got an urgent call from my BRAC colleague. He told me I had to go visit the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar and see how the children were doing. I thought about how much those kids had been through. They saw things that no child should ever see. I wondered, how would they ever recover? I believed play might help them reconnect with what they lost, their culture and their sense of home. I believed play might heal them. And what we discovered over time was that it was not just any kind of play that would help them heal.

6:37It was specifically play from their own Rohingya culture that helped them feel pride, gain confidence and experience joy after being violently forced to leave behind their home. So I'll go back to the beginning. After that phone call in 2017, I travelled to the camps in Cox's Bazar. Aid workers had set up safe spaces for the children. I found children drawing guns in their art. That was not unusual. But I saw something that surprised me. Someone had donated Scrabble sets and Uno cards for the children. It was a generous gesture, but the children had never seen these games before. They didn't know the rules.

7:20They didn't speak the language. Even the adult facilitators didn't know how to play. They were arranging the scrabble tiles into patterns because that's what made sense to them. Standing there, I thought, there's got to be a better way. These kids were used to wide open spaces with trees and flowers. And now they were crammed into a refugee camp with a million other people. Every shelter was a copy paste of the next. Bamboo frames, tin roof, blue and black plastic tarp held back the monsoon rain. The air smelled like still water and human waste. But none of the kids ever complained. And there were no signs of frustration.

8:02Instead, some kids were just withdrawn. Others were restless. Some wouldn't engage with kids or with adults. This was painful to watch, but typical of kids who have gone through such extreme conditions. But even the kids who were withdrawn would come alive and express more joy when they were playing in a certain way, the Rohingya way. So for the next few months, we watched them and we asked lots of questions. What did you play in Myanmar? How did you play it? How did you decorate your home? Why? What does it mean? Children, parents, grandparents and siblings would show and tell us. From the kids, we heard the stories their grandparents told.

8:46We heard rhymes that their siblings knew by heart. We watched physical games that their parents did when they were little. And we watched them make traditional Rohingya art, the kind of art that would be hanging in every household back home. And from that, we built what we now call the humanitarian play lab. Small welcoming spaces for kids three to five, decorated by the Rohingya community itself, with hand-embrochered cloth hanging from the ceiling, and artwork of flowers and homes and animals, images that the children recognized from a life they were forced to leave behind. Each play lab is facilitated by young Rohingya women who spend up to five hours simply playing with the kids.

9:33Each play lab is also supported by other women, trained in psychosocial support to help kids manage their emotion. At 9 a.m., those kids leave their home to walk to the play lab through narrow passageways. It takes them only three minutes to step into a different world while still in the camp. A Rohingya woman, their play facilitator, greets 30 young children. She asks, how are we today? Are we all okay? Here we elect friends and siblings. At home, respect those who are older and love those younger. Then she asks, who wants to lead the rhyme? One child steps forward to lead. Hands are up, bodies move, they chant, they play, they jump, they giggle, they listen to stories, they draw.

10:23One of the girls is Noor. Noor is just eight years old. Five years ago, Noor was undernourished, withdrawn and shy. She was physically weak with continuous diarrhea. When Noor started coming to the play lab at the age of three, she sat quietly. She watched. Then she learned the rope game from the facilitator. The game she plays is a traditional Rohingya one. Two kids hold a long rope, flipping it back and forth, while Noor leaps over it without touching it. Reciting a rhyme while she's jumping, she's tracking the rope, she's controlling her feet, and she keeps the words coming all at once. Noor kept playing.

11:06As she played, she became stronger. Her mother noticed that Noor became less shy and confident. And once Noor learned it, her mother encouraged her, telling her to jump higher, go further, be bolder. When you watch her jump rope, you forget for a moment where you were. She doesn't just jump, she flies. Now Noor walks around the camp with a rope in her hand, just in case she finds a space to jump. She will still be shy to speak to strangers, but she will jump in front of any audience. That's not a small thing for a kid who used to fade into the background. Noor's mother played this game as a girl.

11:46This is not a Bangladeshi game, she says. We Rohingya call this Roshi Fal Dhani. This has made my daughter stronger. She's not scared anymore. She has courage. Then there is Mohammed. Mohammed is about seven years old. He lives with his parents and four siblings. And he is known as the seesaw boy in his neighborhood. This game is not the seesaw that we imagine. The Rohingya seesaw is where two kids wrap their legs around each other like acrobats and swing together going up and down. At the play lab, he learned something that was even more important than the skill to balance during the game. Mohamed learned that he needs to be careful while playing the seesaw game.

12:35One wrong move and the other kid will get hurt. Children learn to pay attention to someone else's body before their own. So he prefers not to play with the younger kids, not because he doesn't want to, but because he's concerned that he might hurt them because of his strength. Playing taught him to pay attention to how others might feel. He became more thoughtful of his mother and his younger siblings. When he gets biscuits in school, he chooses to bring it for his younger siblings instead. And he cleans the house and washes the pots so that his mother can get some rest. He hopes to be a teacher someday.

13:16Now let's talk about Tuhinur. Tuhinur is four years old. As a two-year-old, she was shy and quiet. Other children teased her and called her fully, meaning fat. She never responded. She cried silently to her mother. Her mother Yasmin worried how she would raise her daughter to be more assertive. When Yasmin became a facilitator at the play lab, she brought Tuhinur with her. Soon Yasmin noticed that Tuhinur would be the first to raise her hand to lead the kabbia, a traditional Rohingya rhyme with hand movements and body gestures. Tuhinur learned the entire rhyme and when and how to move her body and when and how to add hand movements.

14:01She now leads the kabbia. She stands at the front, reciting the words in a clear, loud voice and moves her hand and body in a way that the other kids follow. Some of those following her are older. She doesn't seem to notice. Leading the Kabya meant doing this perfectly so that others could learn and follow. She became the lead at age three. Tuhinur loves leading the rhyme so much that she will practice at night with her shadow on the bamboo wall and dance with it. Yasmin says, Tuhinur is bold and no one can tease her anymore. These are just a few examples, and we've been running the PlayLab since 2017, reaching 50 ,000 children across 350 humanitarian PlayLabs in Cox's Bazar.

14:53We've also used this approach in the Rhino refugee camp in Uganda. We've been working on it for the last five years, and we'll be scaling and setting up 150 PlayLab, reaching 63 ,000 children in Uganda. I believe this work really matters. The play lab helps children to get ready to enter school feeling confident and proud. When I visit the camp now, parents say shukriya or thank you for recognizing Rohingya play. The children here didn't choose to be refugees. They didn't choose to leave behind their home and where they belonged. But through play, we've helped them rediscover their own culture, the Rohingya culture.

15:37and in doing so, they showed us something extraordinary. Their ability to find confidence, joy and pride even when a place is so unfamiliar and that is something that every child deserves. Not just the children in Cox's Bazaar. Every child everywhere deserves the right to play their own play. Thank you.

16:04That was Arun Mariam at Play at TED in 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sangmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

16:45Thanks for listening. Thank you.

17:16pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. This episode is brought to you by Service Now. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work.

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