In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in five children aged 6 to 11 does not attend school, and among children aged 15 to 17 this rises to nearly 60% (World Bank, 2023). For girls and children with disabilities, the barriers are even higher. Fewer than 10% of children with disabilities attend mainstream education (World Bank, 2018), and only two-thirds of girls who enroll complete primary school (UNESCO, 2024).
These challenges reflect wider pressures including poverty, limited resources and overstretched education systems, particularly in rural areas. Within schools, teaching often relies heavily on repetition, memorisation and teacher-led instruction, leaving children with fewer opportunities to participate actively, express themselves and develop essential life skills. Corporal punishment is still widely used, while girls and children with disabilities can face additional barriers to participation and inclusion.
Teachers themselves work in extremely demanding conditions and often have limited access to practical methods and resources that help them engage large and diverse classes, involve every learner and build positive relationships with their pupils. Together, these challenges can contribute to children disengaging from school, dropping out and missing out on the education they deserve.
Play is a powerful way to learn! Rather than sitting and listening, children are moving, thinking, communicating and learning together. In a Join for Joy classroom, a maths lesson might involve Math Bingo, where children solve calculations to identify numbers on their cards. A relay race can be adapted to practise letters, words and spelling.
Playful learning also creates opportunities for children to develop essential life skills. They practise communication, teamwork, problem-solving, confidence and respect. Boys and girls learn to play together, children recognise their own and each other's different strengths, and all children are encouraged to participate.
Other games open conversations around important health and social topics: in the game Don't Bite Me, for example, children take on the roles of mosquitoes, doctors and villagers to explore how malaria spreads, recognise its symptoms and discuss how it can be prevented. Other games address topics including gender stereotypes, puberty, menstrual health, personal boundaries, HIV and the environment.
Teachers select, adapt and create activities according to what they are teaching and what their pupils need, making playful learning a flexible method they can use every day. In this way, the approach supports children on three levels: strengthening academic learning, developing essential life skills, and building understanding of important health and social topics.
Join for Joy started in Kenya in 2011 and has since expanded to Uganda, Zambia and Malawi. The approach initially spread through direct implementation in primary schools, training and coaching teachers to embed playful learning into everyday teaching.
More recently, Join for Joy has developed a second pathway to scale by integrating playful learning into pre-service teacher education. In Uganda, a 12-week playful learning course was piloted across six teacher training colleges, reaching more than 970 student teachers. In Malawi, Join for Joy is now working with DAPP Dowa Teacher Training College, where the first cohort of 137 student teachers participated in the course in 2026. By equipping teachers before they enter the profession, the approach has the potential to reach many more schools and children over time.
Join for Joy is registered in Malawi and Zambia, with national teams working directly with schools and education authorities. Since 2011, our programmes have cumulatively reached more than one million children, teachers, family and community members.
Three important developments have strengthened Join for Joy's approach in recent years:
1: Our menstrual health component of the programme was developed after recognising that, even when girls were attending school, menstruation could prevent them from participating fully in lessons, sports and play. We therefore combined playful menstrual health education with access to reusable menstrual products, helping girls gain both the knowledge and practical support they need to manage their periods with confidence and continue participating in school. To date, the programme has reached more than 68,500 girls and community members with menstrual health information and distributed more than 13,150 reusable menstrual cups.
2: We have also strengthened disability inclusion throughout the core teacher training programme. Teachers learn practical ways to adapt activities, rules, space and materials so that children with different abilities can participate meaningfully, rather than simply being present. Every game in the Join for Joy Game Manual now includes specific disability adaptations, helping teachers consider inclusion as part of everyday playful learning.
3: Our latest development is digitalisation. We are developing an offline mobile app that provides a growing library of games, practical demonstrations and adaptations that teachers can return to whenever they need inspiration or guidance. This will make the methodology more accessible to teachers in remote areas.
Join for Joy is open to collaborating with other organizations to implement and expand our playful learning methodologies. We welcome partnerships that help bring inclusive, playful education to more schools and communities. For collaboration opportunities, please contact Charlotte at charlotte@joinforjoy.net
