New lease of life for playground

Cape Egmont Boat Club was established in Warea in 1961. The club promotes boating safety and fishing conservation, and runs competitions.
 
Richard van der Fits, Commodore, said the organisation is involved with three entities; Cape Egmont Boat Club, Cape Egmont Rescue Trust, which have a 10.5m rescue vessel, and the Lighthouse Museum Trust. Cape Egmont Boat Club maintains a playground and public toilets on Boat Club land next to the Lighthouse and Museum.
 
“We applied for funding for a playground. The playground is well used by the locals, club members and visitors to the lighthouse and it got to the point where it was a safety issue.”

A grant of $10k from Toi Foundation assisted with the cost of materials for construction of the playground. “We got the rest of the funding from New Zealand Community Trust and the Warea Domain Board," Richard said.
 
"One of our builder members came on board as the Project Manager. All the labour was gifted by our members. The members did all the work putting together the playground from a kitset. We constructed a border and laid sand on the bottom and soft fall on top. We did it all properly.”
 
“The grant has enabled us to go ahead with the project and put up a playground that was fully compliant with safety standards.”
 
“The playground benefits the younger generation coming through. A lot of visitors drive around the coast and look at the lighthouse and museum. During the summer, we would have 150 kids using the playground per week," Richard said.