IKEA backs UNICEF’s Early Childhood Development kit

In a new collaboration, the IKEA Foundation is donating a range of toys to UNICEF’s Early Childhood Development (ECD) kits to help meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable young children in the world.

The IKEA Foundation is the charitable arm of the Swedish home furnishings retailer.

Over the next two years, the kits will be distributed to an estimated 1.2m children living in emergency or post-conflict settings.

UNICEF’s ECD kit was designed for children under the age of six living in these difficult circumstances. It aims to focus attention on the needs of young children and to support the development of play and learning under extreme conditions.

The toys, with an estimated value of US$2 million, are a donation to UNICEF and will be used in 24,000 ECD kits that will be distributed around the world over the next two years. 

Each of the IKEA products was chosen by UNICEF’s educational specialists. The items include a shape sorter, a sort and stack set, finger puppets, hand puppets, school scissors, coloured building blocks, a paper pad and paper roll. It is estimated that 12,000 kits will be required annually by the UNICEF offices that implement programmes for children in conflict situations and emergencies.