To a child, a play­ground means a lot of things. It is not just about play­ing on the dif­fer­ent pieces of equip­ment, it's al­so about a fun way to learn life skills such as so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and shar­ing.

On the play­ground, a child can move through var­i­ous prob­lem solv­ing and de­vel­op­men­tal skills, and to this end, Nigel Brizan, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Wi Play­ground Lim­it­ed (WiPl), is firm­ly con­vinced that most of the play­grounds that present­ly ex­ist in T&T are out­dat­ed and should be up­grad­ed so as to of­fer a more holis­tic ex­pe­ri­ence to the child.

Wi Play­ground Lim­it­ed is the au­tho­rised lo­cal deal­er for the US based com­pa­ny Game Time (GT) which has been one of Amer­i­ca's lead­ing play­ground man­u­fac­tur­ers for over 80 years.

"It is not about mak­ing mon­ey, it's about what's best for the child. The child has to de­vel­op on the play­ground. Hand-eye co­or­di­na­tion, bal­anc­ing are just a few ways the child can de­vel­op," Brizan said.

Safe­ty is one of the most im­por­tant fac­tors that needs to be em­pha­sised when in­stalling any play­ground, and Brizan's play ar­eas guard against many haz­ards in­clud­ing the im­pact of falls, in­tru­sion and head en­trap­ment.

Each of the parks is equipped with safe­ty zones to al­low chil­dren to ex­it each piece of equip­ment safe­ly.

"For ex­am­ple, if the swing is eight feet high then I need to build that play­ground with a safe­ty zone twice the height of the swing which is 16 feet," he ex­plained.

Like­wise, there is a fall zone of six feet away from the slides.

Al­so, none of the equip­ment in the play­parks ex­ceeds a height of eight feet be­cause, ac­cord­ing to Brizan, there is noth­ing that can be done to pre­vent a child from break­ing bones if they fall from that height.

Present­ly, on­ly a few places in Trinidad have been out­fit­ted with the im­proved play­parks. They in­clude the San Fer­nan­do Hill, the Kids Cam­pus, Moru­ga; the Gulf View Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre; Nipdec, Olton Road, Ari­ma and Charis Works Chris­t­ian Acad­e­my, Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua.

WiPl boasts that its play­grounds are up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and are not in­stalled on hard sur­faces such as grass or con­crete, but in­stead on re­cy­cled rub­ber tiles, en­gi­neered wood­chip fi­bre, rub­ber gran­ules, pea grav­el and oth­er safer ma­te­ri­als.

One of the most im­por­tant as­pects of the play­park is its "in­clu­sive" el­e­ment, which, with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ramps and oth­er fea­tures, al­lows dis­abled chil­dren to al­so en­joy the fa­cil­i­ties.

He not­ed that many of the tra­di­tion­al play­grounds do not cater for the hand­i­capped and some may have dif­fi­cul­ty en­ter­ing the grounds and us­ing the equip­ment.

"Even though the child on a wheel­chair would not be able to go down the slide, we build things on the play­ground that the dis­abled child can use so he or she is still en­gaged."

The new play­parks are con­struct­ed based on sev­en prin­ci­ples that em­body the WiPL/GT goals–Be Fair, Be In­clud­ed, Be Smart, Be In­de­pen­dent, Be Safe, Be Ac­tive and Be Com­fort­able.

"In­clu­sive play­grounds make a fun­da­men­tal state­ment about a com­mu­ni­ty's so­cial val­ues and be­lief in every child's right to play.

"Chil­dren should be giv­en equal op­por­tu­ni­ty to ed­u­ca­tion, in an at­mos­phere con­ducive to learn­ing."

When all chil­dren, nor­mal, gift­ed and those with spe­cial needs are treat­ed equal­ly, we en­hance the hid­den cur­ricu­lum of treat­ing one an­oth­er with love and re­spect."

And how much would such a play­park cost? The an­swer is any­where from US$4,000 to up­wards of US$100,000.

"Our play­parks can take any shape and form and there are so many pieces of equip­ment from which to choose so the on­ly re­al lim­it is your imag­i­na­tion," Brizan said, adding that the or­gan­i­sa­tion can al­so cre­ate cus­tomised, themed play spaces.

WiPl's play­parks how­ev­er are for com­mer­cial use and not rec­om­mend­ed for the av­er­age home own­er.

As an ed­u­ca­tion­al tool, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less, and each play­park can be con­struct­ed so as to in­cor­po­rate a wide va­ri­ety of ob­sta­cles and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes for chil­dren of dif­fer­ent ages.

"In to­day's so­ci­ety every­thing is be­ing up­grad­ed and the way kids used to play long ago is not how they play now."

"The play­ground is a cen­tre­piece in the com­mu­ni­ty.

"A slide and a swing alone will not do be­cause the play­ground must cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of the child."

"Nowa­days, chil­dren stay in­side and play on their elec­tron­ic de­vices and don't even in­ter­act much with oth­er kids be­cause there are no cen­tre­pieces to cre­ate that play en­vi­ron­ment for the child."

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the need for uni­ty among our cit­i­zens, which he in­sists must start at an ear­ly age, Brizan asked: "If we keep the chil­dren apart now, what can we ex­pect to hap­pen in the years to come?

?For ex­am­ples of play­ground pro­grammes like Fit Kid and Play On, vis­it the Web site http://www.ga­me­time.com/re­sources/fit­ness-pro­grams/play-on/. The Play On pro­gram us­es bal­anc­ing, brachi­at­ing (over­head climb­ing), climb­ing, slid­ing, spin­ning and swing­ing to fight child­hood obe­si­ty and pro­mote fit­ness and skills de­vel­op­ment.