Students seek signatures for splash pad

Kindergarten and grade one students in West Kildonan are learning how to fight for change in their community, and hopefully get a new splash pad in the process.

An online petition has been created calling for the crumbling wading pool at Beryl Watts Park, located at 1295 Salter Street, to be refurbished into a modern splash pad the whole community can enjoy.

“Both Amy and I feel it’s really important for students to feel invested in their community,” said kindergarten teacher Jolene McFadyen-Nein, who started the petition with fellow teacher Amy Webb and their students at Margaret Park School.

Towards the end of the school year, the two teachers began taking their kindergarten and grade one students on walks around the community, visiting all the neighbourhood parks as they went.

“When they got to Beryl Watts Park, sadly it was the saddest park,” said McFadyen-Nein, “and it was kind of off-putting because it’s on the ground of our rec centre, which has also been a little unkempt in recent years. A really dishevelled park.”

The experience prompted a class discussion, which McFadyen-Nein says resulted in a very good idea from a grade one student, “very boisterous, she said ‘we should start a petition!’”

The two teachers researched how to create an online petition, teaching their students about it in the process. “We sent each child home with a copy of that petition, and some kids filled the whole thing, other kids brought in one or two,” said McFadyen-Nein. “When we first sent it out, we ended up with 300 signatures from our community, which is awesome,”

That number is up to 600 now, and the plan is to keep the campaign going into the fall, when McFadyen-Nein has a new set of kindergartners to teach. She plans to submit the final petition to city council before Winnipeg’s municipal election on October 26, 2022.

The petition can be found here.