We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sama Elbatrawy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sama, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I already own Prime Press, a children’s book Publisher based in Athens Greece and I have a passion for young learners having been a teacher and a teacher trainer all my life. During the pandemic, I came across an article about a research paper published by the University of Yale about social-emotional learning and using animals in education. I loved the idea and started digging deeper. After a lot of reading a new dream was shaped. An educational farm with trained animals that kids can interact with (not only feed) while learning some values from the character-building program, a 40-hour storytelling program published by Prime Press. I shared my dream with my best friend Konstantinos Danias who is the owner of Dani’s Playground where he teaches different sports like basketball, beach volley, soccer and enduro. He also owns a dog training centre. He decided immediately to partner up and turn the playground into an educational playground with instructional play where kids come for different slots that include character-building storytelling, Read to a Dog program to enhance their literacy skills and confidence, interacting with animals and with nature (hug a tree) to enhance their social-emotional learning, planting, sports and end with reflection time. The Playground situated in a green area offers a structured forest experience that is the first of its kind. My partner trained the animals, dogs, cats and goats, the kids enjoy cuddling with them, reading for them after they finish the story telling slot where each time they learn a new value like resilience, acceptance, flexibility, sharing, friendship, respect, saving and more. Dani’s Playground welcomes kids from 4 – 14 to enjoy instructional play, boost the SEL, learn values and sports and most importantly ‘Read to a Dog’

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started as a class teacher. I taught English maths, science & social studies. I got my MA in children’s readership and my PhD in school management & curriculum design. I started writing books for children and doing teacher training to spread the knowledge. As the editor-in-chief of Prime Press, I had the pleasure to work on so many educational programs in all subject areas. One of the main features of my books is the critical thinking section, each story or course book gives kids the opportunity to think critically about the content and research more. Taking this experience to the educational background seems to me like the total solution. It’s combining education with sports, animals and fun. It’s like having it all. Schools bring their students for field trips at Dani’s playground to enjoy a fun productive day in nature. Parents bring their kids to have an unforgettable experience interacting with nature and animals, learning values and practising the English language in the container classroom, playing sports and having fun.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Konstantinos Danias my business partner owns Dani Dogs, a company that offers dog training services, dog products…etc. We met in 2019 when I was seeking advice for my little puppy back then. He trained my puppy and there was clear chemistry so a dear friendship started to slowly grow. Besides the dog training business, he has an MA in sports nutrition and is an athlete and sports trainer. It was inevitable to combine our experiences together and offer a complete comprehensive solution with education, sports, animals and nature. Do kids need anything more?

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Funding a business is very challenging but not when your partner is Konstantinos Danias. My partner is miraculously talented in wood crafts. With our love for the environment & recycling, he built the place with his own hands with materials from nature. The doors and the seating areas are made of wooden pallets, the door knobs are made of old skate wheels, the signposts are made of old surfing boards, the soccer field is from fishing nets, the swings from snowboards and the classroom is a container. The place is a trip back to nature with all recycled materials. It wasn’t challenging to fund it but was very tiring to make it. It shows hard work & resilience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.danisplayground.gr
• Instagram: sama_childrenspublishing
• Linkedin: Sama Elbatrawy

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