Manchester RAG does East African Playgrounds

Manchester RAG has organised a trip to Uganda for 12 students as part of the East African Playgrounds (EAP) project, which aims to build playgrounds, create communities and give hundreds of children in Uganda somewhere fun, exciting and safe to explore and play. While play is fun, it is also a vital part of child development that is often overlooked.

The East African Playgrounds trip involves a team of Manchester students going out to Uganda for one month to live and work alongside one of their building teams and local communities. They build a brand new playground from start to finish and help to run arts and play sessions with hundreds of children. They even organise weekends away on safari, white water rafting or just chilling on the beaches.

To be a part of this each volunteer has to raise £700, all of which gets spent on the building of the playground. As a charity EAP feels that it is really important to be open with regards to donations. They keep all of their administration costs low and fund the running of the charity through direct donations for that purpose.

There are many ways to raise money and in the past volunteers have raised well over the target. They have used methods such as Just giving, Give as you live, asked friends and family, done three peaks challenges, bake sales, car washing, bucket shakes, auctions, date nights, quiz nights, pie nights, pub crawls amongst other things. Fund raising can be done in many ways and can be loads of fun!

The trip for Manchester students is between 8^th June- 7^th July. But for those who would like to come but can’t make those dates, EAP have two other dates where they can fit them in with another University group.

The charity and projects are not new to this year, they are however new to Manchester RAG.  They were set up in 2009 by two students at the University of Leeds. Since then they have run four summers of playground-building projects with nine different universities.

To sign up for this fantastic opportunity, email the EAP RAG project leader at [email protected] or contact the charity directly at  [email protected]. Hurry up, there are only twelve places and they fill up fast! You don’t need any previous experience, you will only be gaining some as EAP volunteers are trained up for the projects they work on.