Rotary Club of Lantzville helps ‘secure’ a community playground!
As well as serving as the Cambie Road (Nanaimo) Block Watch Captain, Shirley Gremyachev, is driving force behind her neighbourhood association, leading the way to develop a playground for the growing number of young people in her community. Working with the City of Nanaimo, through their Partners in Parks Program (PIP), she found local support including donations in-kind, and moved forward with plans for the playground.
Shirley approached our Club in September 2018 for some financial help, and we were happy to make a small donation on the condition that we be given the opportunity to provide some hands-on help at an appropriate time.
A couple of weekends ago (January 11th), it all came together. Work on the park had progressed sufficiently that some good old “grunt labour” was required. Shirley had organized a few local residents to help and provide mid-morning snacks. Mother Nature, despite some ugly (cold and wet) weather early in the week provided a “window of opportunity”. Half-a-dozen members of the Rotary Club of Lantzville volunteered their time and energy (and shovels and wheel barrows) to build a cedar split-rail fence around the playground – providing some much appreciated security for the kids already using the basketball half-court and hockey net.
Under some supervision from Scott (City Parks) we had a productive morning - digging post holes through rock, gravel and dirt, setting and securing the posts; then tying in the rails. The finished product looked pretty darn good – we thought.
Shirley seemed pleased. Her final e-mail on the project summed it up: “Wow, what a great Saturday morning. The weather was perfect, just enough volunteers showed up, 6 from Lantzville Rotary and five from our Block watch. Our Co-captain provided two large pots of hot coffee, neighborhood ladies provided fruit, cookies, muffins, Timbits and deep fried chicken. Scott Newlands from Nanaimo city parks was amazing at organizing and showing the volunteers how to assemble the fence. With such a happy, willing attitude among all who came out the fence was up within 4 1/2 hours. A million thanks to all those that have supported this Cambie Park project since day one...”
A little bit cold and dirty, we Rotarians left with a feeling that we’d provided a good service to a small part of our community.
