Students transform abandoned ground into kids’ play area

CHENNAI: Until the middle of September, the ground at a corporation school in RA Puram was a virtual ‘no go’ area for its children full of overgrown vegetation and indiscriminately dumped construction debris.
Then, a group of nine students from a private deemed university read about the state of the ground at N S Garden on Park View Road in a newspaper and decided to do something about it.A week later, excited children were swarming all over the facility that had been transformed into a shining new play area.
The nine students, all from the architecture department at Hindustan University, said they had merely re-arranged the construction material that had been haphazardly dumped at the ground and given the existing play equipment a fresh coat of paint.
Arvind Samuel, one of the students, said, "We saw a photograph of the corporation middle school playground in a vernacular newspaper and decided we should do something for the children who were not able to play there. Two trees had been uprooted by Cyclone Vardah in December last year and construction debris was spread all over."
The college students pooled in Rs 5,000 and got to work. "A lot of the construction material dumped there included bits of broken concrete blocks with sharp edges that could be dangerous. We then re-arranged the Kadapa stones, concrete rings, broken bricks and gave the walls a fresh coat of paint, complete with excercise postures," said Arvind.
The students cleared the thick vegetation, coverted discarded car tyres, bamboo shades and other material into play material and also put up a garden. "It was part of our college project and all nine of us contributed equally in clearing the debris. The smile on the chidren’s faces after we beautified the park was more than enough for us," he added.
And the children were indeed thrilled. P Kumar, one of the students of the middle school, said that they had no place to play for almost one year. "None was bothered to clean up the ground. We are grateful to the students who spent so much of their time in clearing the ground personally and breathing new life into it," he said.
When contacted, an assistant engineer of Greater Chennai Corporation at RA Puram said it was not clear if the civic body’s permission was sought in this case. "In future, anyone wanting to launch such initiatives should coordinate with the corporation authorities," he said.