Playpoint (Singapore) Pte Ltd has donated S$28,000 worth of KOMPAN playground to Hiam Health Centre, a malnutrition rehabilitation centre for children, situated in East Timor.
The donation was made possible through one of the founders of The Chain Reaction Project, Ms Zhang Tingjun who approached Playpoint and explained the plight of the children in Timor Leste who are malnourished.
Timor Leste is a relatively new sovereign nation and the newest member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Due to widespread poverty and the 1999 East Timorese crisis that crippled the country, their economic growth remains slow compared to neighbours. Because of this, they are unable to maintain the condition of many public facilities and institutions.
HIAM Health is a rehabilitation centre for malnourished children and is one of two recipients from Dili, East Timor that we have supported— the other being a primary school. Through these projects, we hope to enrich the lives of the Timorese people and give them hope for a brighter future. The delivery of the playground equipment was arranged to coincide with the inaugural Dili “City of Peace Marathon”.
Water, food, electricity, even physical health and fitness, are things that we take for granted but are jarringly scarce in Dili, and more so for the children who suffer from malnutrition. Together with The Chain Reaction Project, we sponsored the centre with new equipment, in hopes of bringing joy to children undergoing treatment and rehabilitation. We considered the climate and terrain of the area so that the equipment will be durable and safe for the children to use, and we also took into consideration that a variety of equipment is needed to provide more play options that can meet the physical development needs of the children. The equipment we donated includes a spinner, a double slide tower and a supernova one rocker.
Not only do playgrounds play a part in honing social and intellectual skills, but they also provide physical conditioning through a variety of motor actions such as running, jumping, climbing and swinging. This is especially salient to this project, as gaining physical strength is one of the goals for children undergoing treatment for malnourishment—and the playground we donated offers a variety of play options to children to build different physical skills. We have in view to give them hope that through playing, they can gain strength to run, jump and climb like other children.
We hope that by training stronger children, we can also help them to build a better future, and we look forward to the day when a malnourishment rehabilitation centre is no longer necessary. In the meantime, we can only do our best to make this process as enjoyable as possible. As always, we are thankful to be able to help communities improve their living conditions and provide play to children.
