Empowering children through the power of play

How the 'Every Child is a Champion' project came to life

The ‘Every Child is a Champion’ project is constructed to transform education through play, a methodology constructed by the LEGO Foundation and implemented by Safe-Hub.

LEGO’s leadership in playful learning and the Safe Hub’s transformative community programmes combine to enable children to use their ability to learn, play and thrive.

We spoke to Zukiswa Phoofolo, Early Childhood Development (ECD) Product Development Lead at Safe-Hub to gather some insight and reflections on the project.

CG: What is your background in the Early Childhood Development space?

ZP: My journey in Early Childhood Development spans over 15 years, starting with formal education in psychology, early childhood development and Montessori pedagogy. I've served in numerous strategic and operational roles that have shaped my perspective on effective early learning approaches.

As Technical Advisor for ECD Strategy, Planning & Coordination at the Department of Basic Education, I supported the refinement of South Africa's national early learning transformation agenda. My work with organisations like Save the Children, Cotlands, The Unlimited Child, and mothers2mothers has given me extensive experience in programme design, implementation, and evaluation.

My leadership capabilities have been recognised nationally. In 2018, I was honoured to be named one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans for Strategic Leadership, acknowledging my work in leading and developing high-performing teams of 70+ staff and 6,000+ volunteers, as well as my innovative approaches to large-scale operations management.

Currently, as ECD Product Development Lead, I'm leading our ground-breaking play-based early learning initiative in partnership with the LEGO Foundation and Common Goal.

What truly drives my work is my purpose: to nurture human potential. I believe the greatest opportunity to impact a person's life trajectory lies in those early formative years.

CG: Can you tell us more about your role in the ‘Every Child is a Champion’ project?

ZP: My role involves leading the strategic development of this innovative play-based learning model while ensuring it integrates seamlessly with existing ECD frameworks and Safe-Hub’s cradle to career offerings.

I'm responsible for building the ECD framework that brings together diverse stakeholders under a collective impact approach.

Day-to-day, I lead our project team across multiple pilot sites in four provinces, mentoring local implementation teams on implementing the ECD product while developing the scalable implementation framework.

I'm also contributing in establishing a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system that will allow us to track effectiveness and support evidence-based scaling as we expand beyond our current pilot sites to global implementation of our newly created ECD product.

CG: Why is ‘Learning Through Play’ important for childhood development?

ZP: Learning through play is possibly the most natural and effective educational approach for young children. Play isn't just something children do for fun - it's how they make sense of their world, develop critical thinking skills, and build the foundation for all future learning.

When children engage in meaningful play experiences, they're simultaneously developing across multiple domains - cognitive, socio-emotional, physical, and linguistic.

A child building a tower isn't just stacking blocks; they're experimenting with physics, developing fine motor skills, practicing persistence, and often collaborating with peers.

What makes play particularly powerful is that it creates an intrinsically motivating context for learning. Children remain engaged because the activity itself is rewarding, not because they're seeking external validation. This leads to deeper learning and greater retention of skills.

Additionally, play-based learning respects the natural development of children. It meets them where they are and allows them to progress at their own pace while still challenging them appropriately.

This is why our project places play at the centre of our methodology - because decades of research and my own experience confirm that it's the most effective approach to early development."

CG: Have you had any early success stories from the implementation of the project?

ZP: Though still in pilot phase, our 'Every Child is a Champion' project is already demonstrating promising impact, particularly in how we're transforming the ECD ecosystem through innovative partnership building.

One of our most significant achievements has been creating a collaborative framework that connects organisations that typically operate independently.

In Gugulethu, we witnessed a powerful demonstration of this approach when ECD owners expressed frustration about overwhelming data collection demands from multiple NGOs.

 Instead of proceeding with our predetermined plans, we paused to listen, then facilitated a meeting with all supporting organisations.

This led to the development of a successful and valuable partnerships with organisations such as GrowECD, a leader in ECD business development.

In rural Louwsburg, KZN, rather than accepting the conventional wisdom that rural implementation is 'too expensive' relative to impact metrics, we developed innovative approaches that challenged traditional measures while maintaining financial discipline.

This has made it viable to serve a community that might otherwise have been overlooked.

What's particularly encouraging is how these partnerships are evolving beyond formal arrangements into genuine communities of practice. We're seeing spontaneous knowledge sharing between organisations that previously had limited interaction, creating informal support networks that strengthen the entire ECD ecosystem.

These early successes in partnership building are establishing the foundation for a more cohesive, efficient, and effective ECD sector - one where the collective impact truly exceeds what any single organisation could achieve alone.

CG: How do you train and equip facilitators, coaches, and educators to deliver the program effectively?

ZP:  Our approach to training the facilitators, coaches, and educators who implement 'Every Child is a Champion' is comprehensive and grounded in both theory and practice.

While training our Master Trainers on our new ECD Play Based, Get-in-the-Game curriculum, we begin with foundational training that covers the theory of play-based learning, child development milestones, and practical facilitation techniques.

However, we recognised that one-off training sessions rarely lead to sustained practice change. That's why we've developed a continuous professional development approach that includes regular coaching, peer learning communities, and structured reflection opportunities.

What makes our training approach distinctive is that we model the same principles we expect educators to use with children - active learning, experimentation, collaboration, and building on existing strengths. Just as children learn best through hands-on experiences rather than lectures, our facilitators develop their skills through practice, reflection, and ongoing support.

To ensure quality as we scale, we're investing significantly in developing local Master Trainers who can provide ongoing support in their communities. This approach builds local capacity while ensuring contextually appropriate implementation.

Drawing on my experience working with practitioners across multiple projects and programmes, I've ensured our ECD training approach addresses not just the 'what' and 'how' of play-based learning facilitation, but also the 'why' - helping facilitators, coaches and educators understand the developmental science behind our methodology so they can make informed adaptations to meet the needs of individual children and contexts.

Find out more about the Every Child is a Champion project here - https://www.common-goal.org/Stories/Every-Child-is-a-Champion2024-07-23

You can read the story of an Early Childhood Development Practitioner here - https://www.common-goal.org/Stories/Transforming-Education-Through-Play-in-Rural-South-Africa2025-01-31