By Dominic Abassi

Nanaimo parents turn to online contest to fund desperately needed playground

Oct 21, 2016 | 3:48 PM

NANAIMO — With no funding help coming from the school district, a group of Nanaimo parents are turning to an online contest to earn money to replace an aging piece of playground equipment at Ecole Quarterway School.

Ecole Quarterway Play Space Committee chair Emma Montpetit has two young children attending the school. She says their goal is to raise between $120,000 and $140,000 for a nature inspired play space to replace the 27-year-old structure that’s on the school grounds now. She says they don’t want to put in another piece of manufactured playground equipment that will create manufactured play from their children and then be ripped out and thrown in the dump in another 25 years.

“I was a student at Quarterway when I was a child, I helped build the one that’s there now…it’s going to be pulled out and taken to the dump and our kids are going to be left with a gravel pit,” said Montpetit. “If our PAC doesn’t come up with the money to replace it there will be nothing to show for it.”

Quarterway is the largest elementary school in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith district, with more than 400 students. The district confirms the school’s largest piece of playground equipment is reaching the end of its life. The district says typically playground equipment is funded by parent advisory councils (PAC’s) through fundraising, donations and parent labour.

Montpetit says a playground intertwined with nature would be a first of its kind in SD68, featuring mole hills, plants, logs, trees and will integrate play equipment into the natural landscape that already exists.

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“We wanted to create something that’s more sustainable for our kids, it’s bringing that west coast feel, it’s bringing that green space back to an urban school,” said Montpetit. “There is a lot of research out there that children just play differently when they’re in nature. There’s only one or two ways you can use a swing or a slide but there’s a million ways to use a log, trees or a mole hill.”

The design for the play space is ready to go and featured a large amount of input from the students that will hopefully one day be using it, says Montpetit. She says the PAC only has about $25,000 raised so far and getting to their target budget will be a monumental task. That’s where the Aviva Community Fund comes into play. The school has made an entry into the online contest, designed to hand out $1-million to community improvement projects in Canada.

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To move on to the next round of the competition, the Quarterway project must finish in the top five in voting in their category. This round of voting finishes Oct. 28. The next round features judging by a panel.

Montpetit says they are now counting on the community to support the project by going online and voting. There is an unfortunate reality that students at Nanaimo’s largest elementary school could be left without their largest piece of playground equipment.

“If we don’t win the money it’s going to be put back on the parents and it’s a lot…there’s only so many bottle drives you can do. The school district has said they need to remove it (the old playground) for quite some time…there’s only so much time they can leave it and there’s only so much time that we can try to raise $100,000 by ourselves.”

To find out more and vote, visit www.votequarterway.com

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There are four other Nanaimo projects entered in the contest as well:

– Uplands Park Elementary wants to build an accessible playground

– McGirr Elementary wants to resurface an existing playground and include new, accessible features

– Nanaimo Travellers Lodge Society is looking for funding towards their new Eden Gardens facility that is already under construction

– Residents of Bourbon Road, in central Nanaimo, want to build a park on their road