David Stippick's Blog
The park down the street. / 07.20.09, 02:52 PM
Last weekend, we did our Justice Project.
The point of the Justice Project was to find an injustice in our community, and act on it. This could be something we do, or something that we assist empowering our neighbors to do, since we will soon be gone.
We settled on cleaning up the park down the street from our apartment. Several weeks ago, we decided on painting over the graffiti, and giving the park a fresher look, fixing two broken benches, cementing in some monkey bars that were already there, and fixing the swings (with better chain) and see-saw we’d put in several months ago, painting a mural on a wall, and getting new nets for the basketball hoops.
Last week, we went around and handed out flyers, and talked to our neighbors about our park work day, and cookout. Saturday morning came, and we rose bright and early to head out and try and beat the heat.
Several kids showed up pretty early on, and started helping with the painting, and Braxton, Jacob, Earl (from the garden) and a few other set to work on the swings. I was tasked with cutting and drilling holes in the wood that would be the bench backs, and see saw (Those of you who know me well, know that this could have turned out not so great, but don’t worry, I had Braxton check my measurements, AND I measured once, and cut twice. Kidding. Measured twice, cut and drilled once. Be proud, it all worked.)
Since I was doing this at the house, I missed most of what was going on in the park, but when I finally got over there, the place looked almost brand new! It was fantastic. We stopped and ate lunch (I devoured four hot dogs, and chips enough for three or four) around noon, and had a great sitting and chatting with the kids.
I think that my favorite part of the day was the kids. They took real ownership in helping out, because this is THEIR park. We’ll be gone in two weeks, but now they don’t have to look at explicit graffiti, or swing on swings that will break in a week or two, and they helped. They can tell people they helped put the swing together. They helped paint that mural. It was a really neat experience.
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amazing potential… and ministry calling.. we all need to find something to do in the community, and go out and do it! i’m starting a ministry to do just that!!
God bless you!!
keep me informed about other things you do please!! thanks!
Jenn Dyck
By Jenn Dyck / Jul 25, 09:47 AM / #