23 April 2012

Blueskin Playcentre Building Project Update

By Michaela Wilson, President Blueskin Playcentre

We are very excited about receiving $25,000 from the Community Lotteries Grant.
Blueskin Playcentre has 13 families (18 children) currently enrolled and our numbers are growing. We are very excited about the move to Waitati Primary School as we believe this strengthens our community and is a wonderful opportunity for the children to make an easy transition to school. We look forward to the retrofit of a classroom kindly offered to us by Heidi Hayward (principal) at Waitati School and supported by the Ministry of Education.
The Playcentre Association, Carole Gillions, Brendon Whip and Maree Coll have supported us with the move by arranging for temporary licences until we have secured the rest of the money for the build.
The community has supported us through different fundraising efforts and donating to the centre. Last year we received support from Mt Cargill Contracting which donated sand for a new sand pit, which the Waikouaiti Community Board donated $1000 towards, and  Lotteries donated $6000 towards an outdoor area and safe fencing for our playground. Paul Ashford Landscaping built the sand pit for us.
We had a wonderful opening with Room 3 (new entrance and Playcentre kids), Buttons the Shetland pony and lots of bubbles. This is the beginning of our new playground area and the children are thrilled. We have been working towards this since 2009 and look forward to completing the project this year.
I should also mention that the centre is run by a parent co-operative of volunteers under group supervision. Staff at the centre have donated their time to help build a new early childhood facility in Waitati, the only one of its kind in Blueskin Bay and a wonderful asset.
The Otago Playcentre Association President Carole Gillions would like you to know:
As you are aware Blueskin Playcentre has moved into a room at Waitati school and currently we have a temporary license for this location. This license expires on 17 August 2012. On behalf of the Blueskin Playcentre I would like to give you a formal update of where we are with the relocation and building extension project at Waitati School.
In November last year all the drawings and specifications for the new extension work were completed and signed off by all of the parties involved (including the Ministry of Education). The total cost of this project has been projected to be $180,930 (excluding GST) of which  Blueskin Playcentre and the Otago Playcentre Association have already spent $17,000.
We applied to our internal capital building fund (SRCW) within the Playcentre Federation for a large portion of the building cost. In December last year we received notification that they would grant us $100,000 and would also provide us a contingency budget of $16,000 for items which come up in addition to those are planned.
We also have applications in with three other funders, Otago Community Trust, Alexander McMillan Trust and Pub Charities for a total amount of $75,000. Just recently we received $25,000 from the Otago Community Trust. We are waiting to hear back from the other two funders. Therefore, the earliest time we would be able to look at commencing building of any kind would be June 2012 (pending funding ). As soon as funding is received we will be able to meet with you and plan a date which suits the school for us to start the building. Until the funding is received though, we are unable to give a firm date. 

Jumble Sale
Our annual jumble sale is coming up on 27 May. The money from this will be used to help with costs towards our new building. We also fundraised at the Bland Park Music Festival. We would like to extend a big thank you and plenty of aroha to Tania Turei and Katie Bourne for the organisation of this event and also to all those musicians who played.
We also enjoyed fundraising  at the annual A&P show. Thank you to those who again organised this event. We are so grateful for the use of the Noddy train at these events. We held an Easter raffle and sold Easter bunnies to raise funds. Thank you so much to all those wonderful people in our community for your support and hard work. We and all the little people at Playcentre are very grateful. Hopefully we see you all at the jumble sale!



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From blueskin.co.nz and 'Blueskin News' published by Blueskin Media: voluntary/non-profit community publishers in Blueskin Bay (Seacliff, Warrington, Evansdale, Waitati, Doctors Point, Purakaunui), Dunedin, New Zealand. All material sent to or published by us is "copyleft" in the public domain and may be freely shared, archived, re-edited and republished. If you want to credit the source it's "blueskin.co.nz".


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