April 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 18

Who, What, Where & how Around the Parks

Just Kids

Building playgrounds in Haiti and Afghanistan

he devastation caused
by the Port au Prince Earthquake in January has been
overwhelming and well documented. Since the quake, the plight of
the people of Haiti, the poorest country
in the Western Hemisphere, has greatly worsened. In addition to the estimated
200,000 Haitians killed, tens of thousands
of children have been orphaned. Many
others have been seriously injured or
traumatized from the earthquake. An estimated two million children have been
affected by the earthquake, many at high
risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Across the world in Afghanistan, the
nine-year war has also had disastrous
consequences for Afghan children. Many
have been killed or injured by landmines
and artillery, and close to 80 percent of
Afghan child ren exh i bi t s o m e
psycholog ical scarring
of war, particularly girls,

who have suffered under the oppressive Taliban regimen. As well, according to a Save the Children survey,
only 19 percent of Afghan mothers and
no fathers believe play is useful in promoting learning.
While the situations in Haiti and Afghanistan are vastly different, there's
one common denominator: Children
in both countries have had no opportunity to experience childhood or " just
be a kid. " Since 2004, the International
Childhood Enrichment Program (ICEP)
has sought to provide opportunities for
Afghan and Haitian children to be kids
by building safe playgrounds in Afghanistan and Haiti. The nonprofit organization
hires local laborers to coordinate, build,
and install low-cost playgrounds in secure, accessible places such as schools,
orphanages, and health clinics. Since its
inception, ICEP has constructed seven
playgrounds in Afghanistan and eight in
Haiti. ICEP's U.S. operation is administered only though volunteers and it has
essentially no overhead.
In 2005, ICEP instituted Children

Enriching Child ren, a pro g r a m f o r U. S .
school children
to raise money
through various
activities to fund
playground development for designated schools in Afghanistan and Haiti. As part of this effort,
students in the United States learn about
the history, language, and culture of the
host country. They also correspond with
the school children in Afghanistan and
Haiti to learn about their everyday lives.
ICEP recently reconfigured its website
to enable such donors to " build " parts
or all of a playground online.
Recently (pre-earthquake), the administrators and priests at Bethlehem
Orphanage in Cap-Haitian approached
ICEP for help in building an accessible playground for its children. The organization currently is in the planning
stages of this project. In the past ICEP
has used salvaged materials to the construct the playgrounds. For this orphanage and the needs of its children (many
now have disabilities), ICEP needs assistance in obtaining accessible play
structures that can be used by all children. Since the earthquake, the orphanage has been inundated by children
from Port-au-Prince, making the need
for a playground even more important
in the children's recovery.

For more information or to help
build a playground through ICEP,
visit its website, www.icepkidsplay.
org, or contact David B. Jones,
Ed. D., CTRS, at 207-780-4587,
dbjones@usm.maine.edu.

16 Parks & Recreation

APRIL 2010

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April 2010 - Parks & Recreation

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