Recently Projects in Place started working in conjunction with the Vancouver Society of Children’s Centres (VSOCC) to re-design and enhance the playgrounds for some of their facilities thanks to the funding provided by Ausenco Foundation. The proposed enhancements to the playgrounds are meant to provide children and their families with opportunities to develop a sense of social responsibility, ecological awareness and sustainability skills and habits on a continual basis.
Last month the Children Centre located on West Pender Street was the first one to be successfully finished. It was a small but yet interesting intervention where all the planters were redesigned to accommodate new plants mainly edible ones as one of the objectives was to introduce the urban agriculture concept in the equation. On our final day, parents and kids worked together planting all the edible plants including fruits (blueberries, grapes and strawberries), different types of vegetables (kale, lettuce, tomatoes, beets and carrots) and some herbs (mint, oregano and chives). Time will allow kids to see the progress of these planters and learn from the process.
It is very exciting seeing this first project coming together thanks to the support of the VSOCC and their staff as well as the Ausenco Foundation and we are all pretty excited knowing there are more to come.