This Lego-like playground kit is designed for children displaced by war

FastCompany: At the Aysaita Refugee Camp in northeastern Ethiopia’s Afar region, there are about 40,000 Eritreans struggling to meet their basic daily needs. For the 10,000 children younger than 10 who live in the camp, that includes one often overlooked resource: play. At many refugee camps around the world, play can, understandably, become an afterthought as humanitarian organizations focus on delivering essentials like housing and food. But studies show that play is critical for helping kids develop executive motor function and relational skills . It’s also a key therapeutic tool for children who have experienced trauma.

These insights inspired Playrise , a U.K.-based charity designing play structures for children living in disaster-relief sites around the world. [Photo: Lewis Ronald/courtesy Playrise] Alexander Meininger, the founder and director of Playrise , says the concept for the nonprofit came about in early 2024. As he watched his own two young kids learning through play, he was simultaneously keeping up with an influx of news about conflict and war in various global locations, including Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Eritrea.

During this time, he became increasingly concerned about how children displaced by violence would be impacted by the lack of access to play structures . [Photo: Lewis Ronald/courtesy Playrise] “Play is important generally for every child to develop, but especially for kids who are in these really extreme circumstances, it helps them to regain some sense of normality, overcome some trauma, escape the horrors that they’ve been through,” Meininger says.

“It is really beyond the physical and mental development for every child: For them, play has a really big role in terms of healing.” Alongside the London architecture firm OMMX , which specializes in what it calls “socially responsible architecture,” Meininger has spent the past two years working on a prototype for a flat-packed play structure that can be easily shipped and built on-site. The first Playrise structure—set to be shipped to the Aysaita camp at the end of April—is endlessly reconfigurable, safe for climbing, and designed to be adaptable to any environment.

The goal is to eventually make play universally accessible to the nearly 50 million kids who are currently displaced from their homes due to violence and conflict. [Photo: Lewis Ronald/courtesy Playrise] Play as a tool for healing Before the Playrise team began the design process in earnest, they consulted with several different refugee communities around the world in order to understand their unique challenges, natural environments, and how the kids themselves actually wanted to play.

To gather those insights, OMMX cofounder and director Hikaru Nissanke, Meininger, and a team of project members spent June and July of 2025 conducting workshops. They traveled to Cairo, where many Palestinian children have fled from the Israel-Hamas war ; six different villages in south Egypt, which is home to a group of refugees from Sudan ; and the Aysaita Refugee Camp. [Photo: courtesy Playrise] Nissanke brought along a kit of fabric pieces, fashioned by a tailor near his London office, to set up makeshift playgrounds at each site.

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The article discusses a significant initiative that combines design and social responsibility, making it highly relevant for brand strategy professionals focused on impactful and adaptable solutions.