Bullying is prevalent in schools and Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception (Aboagye et al, 2021; UNESCO, 2019). This is aggravated in conflict-affected communities; research strongly associates exposure to violence with aggressive behaviors in children (Kim et al, 2019). Alongside teacher violence, bullying is a key cause of school dropout in DRC (Ngamaba et al, 2021). Through observations, we identified that breaktime is a high-risk period of the school day. Unstructured, unsupervised breaks lead to peer violence, accidents, and bullying due to limited supervision and free play on uneven, or even unsafe infrastructure. Many children are excluded or harmed, and teachers often struggle to supervise and maintain order, and can resort to harsh scolding when children need to return to their classes at the end of breaktime.
Violence against children can result in injuries, lifelong health repercussions, as well as adverse impacts on cognitive development, leading to academic underachievement (Moyo et al, 2025). Ngamaba et al (2021) and BRICE project (2022) research shows that rather than conflict-affected schools providing a safe haven for children who are already exposed to violence outside of school, violence continues within school, causing harm to children and obstructing learning.
Play Well with SEL replaces high-risk, unstructured play at breaktimes with teacher-led, structured games that target social and emotional skills, including cooperation, empathy, self-regulation and conflict resolution. It builds on research on the developmental benefits of structured play for building social and emotional skills in younger children (Loukatari, 2019; Silver & Zinsser, 2020; Tuncdemir, 2025), as some children in the DRC have not had the chance to access structured play activities before school, and because schools have the potential to be protective environments that enable friendship, play and self-expression (Masten et al, 2013).
In practice, teachers direct children in orderly lines from the classroom to the schoolyard and back at the beginning and end of breaktime, supervised by school leaders. Children are organized by class for specific games, allowing teachers to supervise effectively and ensure all children are included and safe. The model requires no new equipment, infrastructure investment, or extra teacher preparation burden, making it highly replicable and cost-effective.
2 simple, practical tools support implementation:
- Pocket-sized game cards with the game’s name, instructions, benefits, timing and age groups for teachers.
- Checklists for school leaders to monitor implementation quality.
99% children say they always like playing games with their teacher during breaktime, and 93% teachers say they like using structured play cards (JR, 2025).
We began implementing Play Well with SEL in 2024 in Justice Rising’s 12 primary schools. Schools in eastern DRC with early childhood classes soon began requesting games targeting their youngest students, and Play Well with SEL for early childhood began in 2025.
Also in 2025, through our government partnership, 80 partner primary schools adopted Play Well with SEL, bringing the total number of children reached to over 46,000.
At present, Play Well with SEL costs ~$4 per child to implement with government support in the form of training, visits and tools (as part of a broader quality schooling program which costs under $12 per child in total when implemented in partnership with government).
This approach of supervising and structuring play was also featured in the Global Schools Forum Child Safeguarding Toolkit as a recognised example of practical, replicable safeguarding in conflict-affected, low-resource school settings, extending its reach to a global audience of school networks.
By 2028, Justice Rising aims to scale Play Well with SEL to more than 150,000 conflict-affected children in 300 partner schools, deepen outcome monitoring to build a robust evidence base on wellbeing and bullying reduction, and develop replication guidance for school networks beyond our direct reach.
To Play Well with SEL, we a suggested 4-week phased plan:
Week 1: Secure safe transitions.
Week 2: Train staff on 8 games first.
Week 3: Teachers lead daily games.
Week 4: Introduce the next 8 games.
Ongoing: introduce new games to teachers according to demand.
Contact Racheal Vichei: racheal.vichei@justicerising.org
