While Coast politicians were working to win your vote, I was at the mall lobbying for some votes of my own last Saturday. I'm not running for any position of power or hoping to top the popularity polls, I just want to win a playground for my kid's school.
The votes I spent seven hours begging for last weekend are for a vision I helped shape with several other enthusiastic moms who started this journey with me two years ago.
We want to build a new accessible playground for children of all ages at West Sechelt Elementary School.
We envision a destination playground in West Sechelt where everyone in the community can gather, play and make lasting friendships.
We saw the need two years ago as mobility-challenged students joined our school and were sadly left on the sidelines while others played.
We believe it's important for students of all abilities to play together, so we got to work to make it happen.
We visited other playgrounds to see what worked and what didn't. We polled our students, contacted playground manufacturers and started putting together a plan.
We came up with a three-phased approach to add on to the existing playground with inclusive play equipment geared for kids up to age six, to build a new playground for ages six to 10 and another playground for ages 10 and up.
Each phase would have equipment our students said they wanted and all three phases would sit on an accessible foundation of rubber tire underlay with a synthetic grass cover on top.
The cost for each phase would be $50,000, largely due to the accessible foundation and special equipment we want to purchase.
So with the plans in place, we got to work fundraising for the $50,000 needed for phase one. Two years later we have little more than $5,000 in our account.
You can only go to the same well so many times, and many worthwhile causes on the Coast are hitting up the same donors we are. The grants that were available a few years ago for playgrounds are now dried up, and while the school board would love to make our playground a reality, they don't have any money in their budget for our dream.
We applied for grants and awards as we found out about them, but no one was willing to pry a penny out of their pockets for us.
Then we stumbled onto the Aviva Community Fund contest. Aviva is an insurance corporation giving away $1 million to deserving ideas that create positive change in their communities.
The rules are pretty simple. The idea with the most votes in each round makes it to the end where judges pick the best of the best. We've researched what we need to do to win and we're pretty sure they'll pick us if we can just make the cut.
That's why I spent my Saturday literally begging for votes at the mall.
Many of us feel like this is our last shot. We want to get this project done before our kids age out of the school, and at a total project cost of $150,000 it seems we need more financial help than our community can provide.
We are going into the final round of voting with Aviva on Nov. 14, and we need to get more votes to make the final cut.
If you've read this far, perhaps you want to help. If so, please go to www.avivacommunityfund.org and register. Then vote for Coastal Inclusion idea #11645 every day between Nov. 14 and the final cut off Dec. 16. With just the click of a button, you can help us build an inclusive place for everyone to play in West Sechelt.
