Toy Libraries (ludothèques)

The availability of toys and games together with stimulating environment for the children to get themselves involved in play are important in promoting children's development. Good educational toys and games and the proper play environment for the children are expensive and difficult to provide, particularly in poverty and remote rural areas or in city slums. As toys have great potentials to mould the character and temperament of the young children, to stir imagination and to stimulate creativity and to improve the power of observation and concentration investment in the toys libraries was of great value. At present it is estimated there are more than 4,500 toy libraries in 31 countries on all continents. In Malaysia, prior to 2006, toy libraries numbering about 10-15. In 2006, the i-play Community Toy Libraries was conceptualized and set up primarily as an integrated community service centre offering opportunities for families to engage fully with their children in an interactive play environment. Since the establishments of this pilot project questions were raised as to what extent the objectives in setting up these libraries were achieved. Employing Stufflebeam Context, Input, Process, Product evaluative model (2006) this study attempted to assess the intervention process in the forms of the availability of the inputs, the efficiency of the process, and the effectiveness of the products. The findings show that toy libraries are believed to be the centre that can play important roles in strengthening relationship among individual in the community particularly with regards to children's well-being.Children participations in the planned and free activities had very good impacts on their cognitive, physical, and social developments while the involvement of the parents and the community was found to be very encouraging. Recommendations were made to explore and liberalize the definition used for toy libraries and to set up more toy library in marginalized area.