Physical development, experimental and outdooor play for kids

Help us to purchase toys and equipment that promotes physical development and outdoor play for our community families to lend. Too many kids are spending too much time indoors and on devices not keeping up the physical development. This is greatly influencing their capability to concentrate and learn. We want to change this!

We also want to promote experimental and science based learning four our 3-5 years old allowing them to learn based on curiosity and exploration which is proven to be more successful.

The North Shore Community Toy Library on Auckland's North Shore is run by highly motivated and skilled volunteers that want to make a difference by growing our children into resilient citizen. We have been existing for over 34 years providing generations of children with high quality education toys and being a community meeting point. Over the last years we have been operating us North Shore Plunket Toy Library, but decided to become independent in order to grow our portfolio and founded a new society.

Each of our toys gets taken home by up to 25 families per year. That's a lot of play time and a lot of little hands. Therefore, our toys get worn out and also can break. And no one wants to play with broken toys. For this reason we continuously require to purchase new toys which we would love support with. Each 1-2 years we focus on another area. This year we decided to get more balance, climb and outdoor toys to promote physical development in children that too often don't get enough active movement. Furthermore, our 3-5 year olds section looks pretty empty at the moment and we would like to get more challenging toys in for them. We would love your financial support, but are always happy with quality toy donations as well (they toys need to be high quality and safe!!!). Help us growing our young kids into resilient community members and to stop the over purchase of cheap short-lived toys!

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If you want to know more about us:

As Community Toy Library our main operation is to provide high quality, educational toys to our families. This allows parents to hire toys in regards to the changing needs of their children. At a low cost (which is important for families on a budget) they have access to a wide variety of toys. Furthermore, borrowing toys rather than purchasing them is environmentally friendly.

However, our role in our community goes far beyond providing toys. We are a meeting point for parents, offering support for new parents and integrating them into existing community structures. With many of families missing family support, being migrants or often being new residents of the areas this connection is often needed. We recently starting 2 new projects: one is to integrate families with special needs children better and second to connect our young families with elderlies allowing the children to grow into resilient citizen whilst actively involving the elderlies in our activities and therefore in the community.

We offer:

• Access to hundreds of educational toys

• Less financial outlay than purchasing toys

• Borrow toys that match your child's age, stage of development and interests

• Borrow toys that facilitate a particular skill development in children

• Avoid storage issues of multiple bulky toys

• Help the environment by borrowing rather than purchasing

• Having the opportunity to try toys before you buy them

• Able to exchange toys as children lose interest in them

• Access to toys of a high quality

• An opportunity to meet other families in the community and network

• Volunteers on hand to help you and your children

Our volunteers spend up to 20 hours per week each to keep the grounds running. However, like every organization also we have expenses like rent, maintenance, toy repairs, toy purchase, stationary and packaging. Memberships, fundraising and sponsorships covering about 50% of our costs and therefore, we do need the support of our community in order to cover all expenses.

We are an community integrating charity with a management entirely run by volunteers, but we need support to replace old toys.