Association “Play” is a Croatian non-profit non-governmental and non-political organization registered on the 13th January 1999 in Zagreb. The basic objective of the Association is providing rehabilitative, educational, psychosocial and pedagogical assistance and support to children, youth and adults in order to improve the quality of their lives and the quality of the social community in general.
Young enthusiastic students and graduated professionals of social work, social pedagogy, psychology, and pedagogue founded the Association. They noticed that children and youth often do not know how to resolve their problems or they do not know how to satisfy their needs in an appropriate way. Due to that, children and youth use unacceptable and inefficient ways of behavior like aggression, stealing, addiction, withdrawal, isolation etc. Also, professionals noticed that parent and teachers have a hard time dealing with children and youth that start to show some of the behavioral disorders – parents and teachers usually say that they are powerless. Professionals that founded the Association wanted to make a change so the Association is dedicated to providing support and education to children, youth, parents and professionals in the humanitarian field. In that way beneficiaries of the Association can competently overcome difficulties they face.
Basic determinants of the Association, all our actions, programs and projects are:
- ethic, professionalism and responsibility
- foundation on theory and practice
- multidisciplinary approach
- cooperation between sectors
Through the last seven years the Association Play received a great number of support letters from primary schools, faculties, distinguished professionals, Institutes, ministries, institutions for children and youth. In all of them the quality of our work and the whish for future cooperation is emphasized. We are very proud of the fact that the Croatian State Department for Prevention of Behavioral Disorders together with the Croatian State Institute for Protection of Family, Motherhood and Youth included two of our programs (“Modification of behavior through play- program for prevention of behavioral disorders of primary school children “ and “Contact- program for improvement of life skills of children and youth in the institutions”) into the group of 14 programs that represent potential best-practice models for prevention and treatment of behavioral disorders of children and youth in Croatia. Also we are very proud that the Croatian government-office for associations gave us the acknowledgment for the promotion and development of volunteering in Croatia.
Except for the direct work with beneficiaries, the Association Play is permanently working on the promotion of children’s problems by organizing social actions, attending round tables and seminars and writing articles. Very successful actions were “Care 2001 to infinity” and “quality clubbing for quality tomorrow”. Both actions aimed on education of society about behavioral disorders and encouraging the society to protect children and their rights.
It is important to emphasize that one of the primary activities of the Association Play is the education of young professionals that implement our activities. A whole team of supervisors and educators is responsible for their education and development of their professional skills. In that way the Association is in a position to maintain a high professional standard and to develop professional recourses.
We believe that only by mutual efforts we can resolve problems so all our programs are encouraging cooperation and coordinated actions of different segments of society. The Association Play is a member of two non-formal networks “Coordination of associations for children in Croatia” and “European network for prevention of violence towards children and youth”.
The value of our work has been recognized and financially supported by the Ministry of work and welfare, City of Zagreb, Ministry of science, education and sport, Ministry of family, defenders and intergeneration solidarity, National Association for Civil society Development, Office for Human Rights, Institute open society, Levi’s and many other big and small donators and sponsors. Till now we had mostly relied on donations from our national and local government (National/local government grants 68.4%, National/local foundations grants 17%, Self-financing 13.4%, Individual donations 0.01%, National/local corporate grants 1.18%) but we are now trying to get international funding. In the last few years we have begun the development of self-financing activities in order to make our programs accessible to a greater number of beneficiaries and become sustainable.
Today the Association is implementing 4 programs, 4 subprograms and 2 projects for children in primary schools, children and youth in institutional treatment, parents, teachers, students, and professionals in the humanistic field and to other people that need psychological support. The number of people that are involved in the Association is increasing every year. In the school year 2009/2010 Association had 542 beneficiaries (745 children, 92 youth, 33 students, 264 parents, 164 teachers and professionals). During that year the Association Play had one employed person and 53 honoraria associates (psychologist, social pedagogues, pedagogue, rehabilitators, and social workers) and 31 volunteers.
We see our self as a growing association in the sense of a growing budget, number of beneficiaries and number of professionals that work for us.
We developed a General strategic plan of Association and in accordance with it we developed a strategic plan for self-financing. The most important criteria for the self-financing venture are: Stick to our mission and goals, Quality of venture and Expanding knowledge and skills. Values that each activity should promote are Professionalism, Respect for human differences, Humanity, Tolerance, Ethics, and Reliability. Both plans support the board game venture and the board game venture is in accordance with the Association’s values and important criteria.
We are happy that each day there is more and more people that work together with us on the realization of our mission “provide professional support to both individual and the society in developing their potentials, through the processes of cooperation and learning”.
We are grateful that with each day thanks to the committed joined efforts we are closer and closer to reaching our mission “society in which every individual recognizes, uses and develops his/hers own potentials to contribute to the life of social community as an active, productive and content participant”.