ROTARACT CLUB OF ANTIGUA

Remember how much fun it was to be climbing, sliding, swinging and running around and all over the playground when you were a child? Or have you ever stumbled upon a toy from your childhood that makes you pause, remembering the days of carefree playtime? Then you must know how important a play space is to any child.  It was through our drive to “Illuminate- Reach within and light the way”, as our District Theme states that this project was initiated, and then locally dubbed “Let us Illuminate your world”.

Our mission was to create an environment that promotes and restores positive social bonds between families in the Cedar Grove Community. Our main goal was to improve the look of the playground by adding colour and life to lack lustre play space encouraging children to play more. We figured "playgrounds are essential educational tools that help children to learn through fun and play. Especially in early childhood, playgrounds can improve children’s physical and mental health, as well as enhance their social skills and self-esteem."
We wanted to add creativity and colour to the children’s world by creating a more fun colourful play space for them to interact with each other.  

The playground consists of two slides, a see-saw, a monkey bar and four swings. On Saturday morning members of the Rotaract Club Antigua, Rotarians and Constituency Representative, the Hon John Maginley came out to paint and transform the playground equipment. 

Passers-by along with community members watched and a few expressed how pleased they were to see a group of young vibrant volunteers giving up their Saturday to paint. Often, the odd one would stop to encourage us, ask what the name of the group was and even lamented on the good job we are doing for the Cedar Grove community - the children.

This is a central play area for the children, when we got on site at 9. They were there for their usual play time before they go off to swimming at Fort James and after swimming they were back to see how much we've transformed the area. During the debriefing and prayer time with Rotarians and Rotaractors we could sense the enthusiasm for the project. As we prepared to paint the respective play items and hoped for no rain, we knew the project was going to be a success.

We painted the play area in five different colours: blue, green, yellow, pink and purple plus the use of a bright red primer. Everyone just grabbed a brush and painted and made it happen. The children very much liked the colours and the way we mixed them.

A few photos recapping the event: