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“It's a bit like winning the Oscar of toys," says co-founder Jana Barhouche of the startup Beaver Edu as she and fellow alumnus Rayan Barhouche won the Best Startup Toy in the world for 2026 at ToyAward, the largest global toy fair. This milestone follows a strong year for the startup, after completing the Build and Accelerate 2025 Program at the Talal and Madiha Zein AUB Innovation Park and winning the Chinyeh Hostler $10K Social Innovation Award at the AUB President's Innovation Challenge.
Beaver Edu is a startup founded by siblings Jana and Rayan Barhouche, both AUB graduates. Born out of a passion to assemble and build shapes and objects, their startup created a wooden construction kit assembled with modular connectors, the "Beaver Edu Construction Kit."
The kit's most valuable and widely loved feature is the safe wood cutting tool. Jana and Rayan developed a patented cutting tool designed for children over nine, which allows them to cut wood into any size they want in a simple, easy, and safe way. The kit is made up of birch wood sticks that can be assembled endlessly. Connected by modular connectors, kids (and even adults) can use the kit to create different structures and shapes, from bikes to bridges and planes.
Jana highlighted how being part of the Zein AUB iPark community for over a year was a truly meaningful journey for Beaver Edu. “The support, guidance, and trust we received along the way played an important role in shaping Beaver." Winning the PIC 2025 Chinyeh Hostler Social Innovation Award also gave Beaver great encouragement. As Jana says, “beyond the recognition and financial support, it gave us something even more valuable: the reassurance that what we are building matters, and that we are on the right path."
The ToyAward is among the most respected honors in the toy industry, presented at the largest global toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany. The event gathers over 2,300 exhibitors and close to 57,000 visitors annually from across the world. This year, more than 600 entries competed across six categories, including around 90 startups.
Jana highlights how participating at the fair “opened the door to valuable international connections with distributors, educators, and partners from around the world, paving the way for global expansion in our very first year of operations."
In its praise for the kit, the jury described it as a “combination of technical thinking and crafting" allowing for the “expansion of possibilities offered by new sticks and your own designs."
Beaver Edu, in its long-term plans, aims to expand its presence across schools in Lebanon while exploring opportunities in Gulf countries, where the education sector is seeing strong and growing investment.