Our House e-newsletter September 2011 | страница 13

from the Director
Georgia Mjartan, Executive Director
This summer marked the 5th anniversary of when
250 people came out on a hot summer day to
build a playground for the children of Our House.
In light of this, I have given some thought to the
impact of the playground on our children – over
1,000 swinging, jumping, playing boys and girls
over these past five years.

When I first came to Our House 6 years
ago, there was so much to be done it
was hard to know where to start. Our
buildings were falling apart. One of the
houses where homeless families live
during their stay with us was in such
bad shape that the ceiling literally caved
in one day. The grounds of our campus
looked like a sea of broken asphalt. In
our community, like communities across
America, the face of homelessness was
changing. We were seeing a dramatic
increase in homeless families with
children. To respond to this growing
need, we had just finished building a
shelter that would house 80 people,
compared to the 40 beds we had offered
previously. Coupled with the Family
Housing also on our 4-acre campus,
Our House now had housing for 110
people on any given night. A third of
our residents were children.
With so much do ahead of us, and as a
new Executive Director, I went to my
staff and posed the question to them,
―With so many problems, so many needs,

where do you think we should start? What
is the most important need we have?‖
A teacher in our child care, normally
timid, spoke out without hesitation, ―We
need a new playground.‖ Our small,
rusty playground was so old that pieces
of it had come apart, leaving exposed,
sharp metal edges. The old playground
sat right off of the main drive to enter
and exit our campus. It had been fenced
in with chain links, but because there
wasn‘t enough room, the space was so
tight that a child swinging couldn‘t jump
off while in mid-air or else he would
careen into the fence. It was unsightly,
unsafe, and worst of all, it was a playground that told our children that they
were not important.
Every week, I would go to my staff
meeting and ask my team if they had
any suggestions or questions. Every
week, Ms. Janet, the child care teacher,
asked me, ―Georgia, when are you going
to get us a new playground?‖
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