LEGO Opens door to a colorful world for refugee children in India

NEW DELHI – Three-year-old Omran is excited about the house he’s made with new LEGO toys. “My house has a door and a window,” he exclaims from the floor of a crèche in South Delhi supported by the UN refugee agency.

“That’s why I like these toys, I can make a real house,” he adds. A house is something he, his parents and his brother and sister, can only dream of right now. As Afghan refugees in India for more than a year, they live in a tiny apartment.

But when Omran comes to the crèche, he and the other refugee children, mostly Afghans between the ages of one and a half and five, enter a world of colour and fantasy thanks to a generous donation from the Danish toymaker LEGO Group.

LEGO sent 16 DUPLO Boxes intended for children aged one and a half to four years old and eight LEGO Play Boxes for children aged four and above. UNHCR distributed them to eight crèches supported by the refugee agency and run by the New Delhi YMCA.

The crèches provide a place for working refugee mothers – from Afghanistan, Myanmar and Somalia – to drop off their children in the morning, secure that their children are safe and learning something – and pick them up in the afternoon.

The new toys encourage children to identify colours and place building bricks in a logical way. The boxes include big cars, half finished trucks and planes, houses, doors and windows, animals and brightly coloured building bricks of many sizes.

Serhat, one of two Afghan refugee woman looking after this crèche, says the LEGO toys help develop the childrens’ thought process as they concentrate on placing brick upon brick after brick, carefully co-ordinating colours and shapes “They have learnt how to make blocks into houses and have learnt to differentiate colours.,” she says.

Just ask three-year-old Yusuf. “The toys have nice colours and they are all different,” he says. “I like yellow and blue.”

Milad, a three-year-old who was born in Kabul and came to India over a year ago with his mother and three siblings loves playing with the toys because “I can make cars and aeroplanes.”

For five-year-old Bashir, it’s all about size. “I love cars and with these, I can make BIG ones,” he says. Five-year-old Mursal, a lovely child with sparkling eyes, is more drawn to the animals: “I love the horse with its pink tail. I can play with it all day long.”

Amid all the happy laughter in this basement room, the highest accolade comes from two-year-old Farhat. “Can we take them home,’’ she asks shyly, looking at the truck she’s made, with a horse on it. “ I want to play with this every day.”

By Nayana Bose in New Delhi

There are about 22,000 refugees and asylum seekers assisted by UNHCR in India today, mainly from Afghanistan and Myanmar. Although India is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have a national refugee protection framework, it continues to grant asylum to a large number of refugees from neighbouring States and respects UNHCR’s mandate for other nationals. Refugees and asylum-seekers often live in poverty, dispersed in urban areas, where they can face violence and exploitation.

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