NUMO: Let’s Play and Grow a campaign to develop preschoolers' skills has been started

The plusone social impact team created a comprehensive communication campaign to develop preschoolers' skills called NUMO: Let’s Play and Grow, initiated by UNICEF Ukraine in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

Parents of preschoolers often feel confused by the flood of information about their child's socio-emotional development. «Do I react correctly to tears or outbursts of anger?», «How can I teach my child to recognise emotions and talk about their feelings?», «How can I help my child to communicate confidently with others and make their own choices?» — these and similar questions are of interest to many adults. And this is natural: socio-emotional skills form the basis for healthy self-esteem, the ability to empathise, resolve conflicts, and build warm relationships with peers and adults. 

Therefore, for the fourth year, the NUMO platform, created by UNICEF Ukraine together with the Ministry of Education and Science, has been helping hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian families every year. Its materials are focused on the overall development of preschoolers and the development of important skills, including socio-emotional ones. The platform contains tips on how to help children learn about the world: from exercises and games for every day to cartoons and puppet theatre.

To attract attention to the importance of developing social and emotional skills in preschoolers, the plusone team has developed a complex communication campaign using gamification techniques. In it, we not only encourage adults to play and develop together with children, but also emphasise that play is a natural way for preschoolers to learn about the world. In the process of playing, a child actively explores, experiments, learns to interact with others and express themselves - and this forms the basis for the development of speech, thinking, emotional intelligence and social skills.

As part of the first stage of the campaign, plusone social impact agency together with Bambuk production and director Dasha Shi created a series of three videos focusing on the development of preschoolers' social and emotional skills. The videos show how adults can help preschoolers learn to make choices, interact with peers and adults, and learn to recognise emotions. All this is possible thanks to the materials and practical exercises on the NUMO platform.

At the same time, an all-Ukrainian outdoor advertising and digital promotion campaign was launched with the participation of partners, so all materials can already be seen on city streets, in the Kyiv metro, Ukrzaliznytsia trains and on social media.

Margarita Kleshchayeva, partner at plusone social impact: «Together with UNICEF, we are working on a very important project in Ukraine — communicating the development of preschoolers' socio-emotional skills. In order to offer high-quality creative solutions, we talked a lot with parents of preschoolers, experts, and joined focus groups. And we are very pleased that the campaign products have found a response from parents, who now know where to find answers to all their questions about child development, how to develop them and what tools can help them. We are working on the second stage of the campaign, the results of which you will soon be able to see. We thank our partners for their trust!» 

The campaign is ongoing and we will be happy to share news about the next stages of the campaign very soon.