Upgrade of Draethen village playground equipment

New multi-play equipment for Draethen park

Who are we?

Draethen Community Group is a group of residents from Draethen village, who are passionate about maintaining and improving our local area wherever we can. We endeavour to deal with any issues that may affect our area, and we try to support the things that are important to our fellow residents. In return, we have the backing of our community, who often come together to help us with our various projects.

The background to our project

Draethen village is home to around 70 families, plus there other houses and villages nearby, a large proportion of which have children of various ages. In addition to this, we regularly welcome many visiting families to our picturesque countryside setting, who will often stop by in our park, as it is a clean, safe environment for them and their children to spend time.

The current slide is functional, but it's tired, rusty, and with the paint peeling away. It's also very limited in the play it offers to children.

Here are some children from Draethen looking disappointed at our current slide :( They would be delighted it if we could replace this slide with a brand new exciting piece of multi-play equipment!

Our aim

We would, therefore, love to upgrade our park's tired, old, rusty, slide to a brand new piece of multi-play equipment. This is a project that has been close to our hearts for a number of years. Previously we have struggled to obtain enough funding to be able to complete this project. However, we are now in the brilliant position where we can, hopefully, finally push forward with our plans.

Who will benefit?

This multi-play equipment would benefit both our village community and visitors to the area. It would be suitable for a wider age range of children than the current slide, and will provide various play options for some children with additional needs. Keeping fit is extremely important, and this equipment would play its part in helping keep our children active, happy and healthy.

Funding and our project

Caerphilly Council will provide the funding to replace our old slide. However, we don't want to have to stop there! We would love to obtain something really special for our village; a brand new piece of multi-pay equipment, which would include a slide, but also would be so much more than that.

In total we're looking to raise around £8,000 to top up the funds from Caerphilly Council, so as to obtain the multi-play equipment that would be so amazing for our community. The £5,000 we could potentially win from Calor would go a long way in helping us achieve this.

We have also already raised some funds via our community events, such as Easter Egg hunts and duck races. Going forward, we are looking to restart these events, now that Covid restrictions are beginning to be relaxed. Plus, we're also hoping to do a sponsored walk and do other fundraising.

An example (above) of one of our fundraising events to raise money for the new park equipment.

We also are looking to apply for grants, including this one from Calor. If we won, the £5,000 Calor Rural Community grant would pretty much secure us the equipment!! (on top of the funds already raised). Though, if we did exceed our target, we would look at an even more amazing piece of multi-play equipment, and also at which other ways we would improve our local communal and play areas.

In order to engage with our community, we launched a competition for our local kids, to design a poster to advertise our project. Here is our winner (by James, age 6)!

Please, please, please consider supporting this project with likes, shares and donations where possible!

Many thanks!

The Draethen Community Group