Playground Construction in Videle, Romania
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When a first year Architectural student at QUB, we had a student competition to design a playground for a village in Romania made from sustainable timbers which could be flat-packed and driven over the Romania from Belfast in one truck. In groups, we were each given an element of playground equipment to design. I was given swings. My adjustable swings won the competition, principally because no one else in the class designed swings! I subsequently went for an interview to travel to Videle in Romania with 16 other QUB students, and was accepted. We fundraised for the voluntary expedition and spent 11 days in Romania in the summer of 1992 building the playground for the local village children, as they had become resentful of the facilities in an orphanage in the village which had been overhauled by the Cumber Romanian Orphanage Appeal. It was run as an inter-chaplaincy project and about half of the students were from the Architecture programme. We were filmed for Romanian TV on the day of the official opening by the Mayor.
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