Alliance for Childhood in Brazil !
​World Play Week
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World Play Week 2025 mobilizes Brazil to protect the wonder of childhood
This year, the SMB reached 230 cities in all regions of Brazil, with 898 activities and an open invitation for everyone to reconnect with play. From May 24 to June 1, the Alliance for Childhood Brazil promoted the World Play Week 2025, with the theme “Protecting the Wonder of Childhood”. The mobilization reached the entire country, bringing together 549 registrations and 898 activities, a significant growth of around 28% in registrations and 43% in activities compared to the previous year.
This was the 16th edition of the World Play Week, always with free activities open to the communities. Like a large living network, the mobilization included volunteers, educators, families, public managers, collectives, cultural associations, schools, universities and many other defenders of childhood. City governments and public institutions also participated actively, reinforcing the collective commitment to the healthy development of children. This year, the main objective of the WPW was to promote democratic, safe and affectionate play, which values ​​creativity, imagination and wonder as essential parts of childhood. After all, playing is a way of experiencing life with joy and curiosity, and this power often fades over the years, stifled by the rigidity and conformism of adult life.
Therefore, World Play Week is a collective gesture of resistance and care, a reminder that wonder needs to be cultivated — not only in children, but also in those who accompany them.
For Ana Rosa Picanço, educator and researcher of childhood who participated in the preparatory meeting for the WPW , “play is an active attitude towards life”, a way of being in the world that should accompany human beings in all phases of existence.
She observes that, in adult life, spontaneity gives way to rigid rules and molds, stifling our capacity for risk and surprise. “As we become adults, we become trapped in rules, molds, and ready-made ideas, and that ability to take risks and be surprised becomes smaller and more or less dead.” And she warns: “When a child doesn’t play, it’s a sign that something is wrong.”
The educator emphasizes that protecting the wonder of childhood is a task for all of society and this requires the construction of sensitive, welcoming, and accessible spaces where children can recognize themselves as creative, powerful, and beautiful beings.
Who teaches how to play?
This year, World Play Week reached 230 cities in all regions of Brazil. The regions with the highest number of registrations and activities, in descending order, were: Southeast, Northeast, South, North, and Midwest. The actions, the vast majority of which were in person, took place in schools, squares, libraries, hospitals, universities, open streets, and other spaces that welcome and protect play.
In addition to Brazil, the organization terre des hommes Germany (tdh-A), takes the WPW to their partners in Latin America, and activities also took place in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico,Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina and Chile.
Traditional games, workshops, conversation circles, artistic experiences and moments of listening and care created environments where imagination flourished and emotional bonds were strengthened. Free play proved, once again, to be a fertile field of autonomy, intergenerational coexistence and expression of life.
The WPW also established itself as an invitation to learn from children. They show us, with simplicity and courage, that playing is taking risks, testing limits and opening up to new things.
For art educator and researcher Nélio Spréa, “playing is opening up to life, it is allowing life to surprise us”. He emphasizes that playing is not just a pastime, but a vital necessity. “A child who does not play is very sick”, he emphasizes.
Wonder depends on rights.
World Play Week is held annually by the Alliance for Childhood, always around World Play Day, celebrated on May 28 since 1999. And in recent times, play has gained even more recognition: May 28 was recently recognized as National Play Day in Brazil since through federal law from June 9, 2025. And the UN established International Play Day on June 11, 2024.
These dates reinforce play as a fundamental right, but for this right to be real, the engagement of the entire society is necessary. Educator Lívia Melo, with experience in public policies and working in vulnerable communities, reminds us that many childhoods are still denied in Brazil. Black and poor children often grow up deprived of the lightness and freedom that play provides. She points to the persistent effects of structural racism and social inequalities that shape childhoods marked by the hardships of life.
“Wonder should be a right for all children,” says Lívia. And the cure? She proposes:
“Cultivate the courage to play with life, even in the face of pain and limitations. This attitude is a form of resistance. Playing means exposing ourselves to life, opening ourselves up to life, allowing life to surprise us. It is a silent rebellion against conformism, against the logic that tries to imprison us.”
Lívia concludes with the wisdom of Bantu philosophy: “Every human being is a living sun. If the sun inside us is not alive, we are dead.” In this sense, playing is the light that warms, awakens and keeps this sun burning in every child.
