How do you make people aware that War Child Sweden helps kids in war zones become kids again? We found a way that not only creates a better future for kids growing up in wars, but also improves life for kids growing up in Sweden.

Time To Play is a mobile website that makes it possible for you to give kids growing up in war zones the opportunity to play by buying a timeslot in your own calendar to play with your own kids. Time To Play managed to raise over four working weeks of playtime in only five days.

When researching we found that leading newspapers and psychologists had raised the issue of parents in Sweden are missing out om valuable playtime as they spend more time with their smartphones and tablets and less time together. This was a problem we wanted to address in order to highlight the importance of playing together as a crucial part of children’s development. Our core target group was parents in Sweden with kids up to 13 years. In order to reach out and make the message come across we needed to get in to the platform where they spend most of their time – their smartphones. And to make room for play, we also needed to get into their calendars.

That people would be aware of how important playing is for children’s development and by that understanding the importance of War Child’s work. And that they also would take actual time to play in their daily lives.

The turning point for the idea was when we realized that many of us in the team that have kids are planning our daily lives in our calendars. But we don’t plan for actual play time with our own kids. That’s when we saw the opportunity to use the calendar as a key part of the idea.

Time To Play is a mobile website that makes it possible for you to give kids growing up in war zones the opportunity to play by buying a time slot in your own calendar to play with your own kids. The key element is the .ics invite that appears in in your calendar and where your donation is turned in to a time-to-play-time slot. The time slot is also a communication channel to tell more about War Child.

The greatest challenge was to differentiate War Child form other fund-raising organisations and make them an option for people’s donations. The most rewarding moment was when we saw that people donated and made time to play – both for their own kids and for kids growing up war zones.

This became a very emotional project to all of us as we realised that we are privileged and do take certain things in life for granted. It also became a reminder that we also need to take more time to just have fun together.