The Toy Bank – enabling play and learning for underprivileged children in India

The challenge for children in India

Play is vital to a child’s social, cognitive and emotional development, yet many low-income communities across India lack access to toys, games or a safe space to play. This limits early development, school readiness and future opportunity, and in India, where a child is born continues to heavily shape what they become.

The Toy Bank’s approach

Rather than one-off donations, The Toy Bank builds toy libraries shared across schools and communities for longer-term impact. Under-used toys from more affluent areas are redirected to smaller schools, government early childhood centres (Anganwadis) and remote rural communities, while specialised toy libraries, including braille and textured toys, support children with disabilities, child-labour survivors and orphans. Toys are gathered through collection drives, refurbished where needed, then repackaged into age-appropriate kits for schools, shelter homes and educational centres nationwide.

Major achievements

The Toy Bank has reached over 529,000 children and distributed more than 15 million toys across 30-plus Indian states, saving an estimated 386,500 lbs of CO₂ emissions in the process. Flagship programmes include School Connect, which redirects toys from privileged schools and corporates to under-served ones, Anganwadi Connect, which equips early years centres with storybooks, sensory toys and staff training modules, and the Safe Playroom Programme, which installs fully equipped playrooms in municipal schools for economically disadvantaged children.