Why it was needed

Junction49 at Birmingham wanted to help the local community and get students involved in one-off volunteering without any strings attached so they could get a flavour of what volunteering is actually like! So we went to Broadmeadow Junior School in Kings Norton which had sent the University an email asking for help.

Broadmeadow has a garden area which is over-grown and neglected, and which would be ideal for a play area for the children. Also, bottles of alcohol and rubbish are constantly being thrown over the school fence into this area making it highly unsafe, as it is, for children to be in. Their playground fence has never been painted or treated and the headteacher's thoughts were that by painting it, it would brighten up the whole area

What's being done

We went to the school at 12pm together, all sporting our new Junction49 'Volunteers' T-Shirts. We split up into smalll groups and did the following:
- Sanding and Painting the playground fence
- Litter Picking
- Extreme Weeding
- Planting new plants in the garden area

How it started

Unfortunately we did not get the playground fence finished due to hail and then rain (in April!). But we did stop at a sensible place and got all the other activities done. The garden area looked so much better with a bit of TLC and hopefully will soon be open for the children to play in!

More

The project took about 4 hours (having had to stop due to weather conditions) and there were 6 volunteers in total.