Courts for Kids

There is an NGO that was started in 2007 called "Courts for Kids" (http://www.courtsforkids.org/) that partners with communities world-wide to promote sports and sends a group of athletes, students, or a volunteer group from the USA for one-week to help build the court.

The task - to build a sports court for a community overseas.

The job - 1 week of blood, sweat, and tears to build the court.

The outcome - a brighter future for a community.

Volunteers from Kaiser Permanente - California, Oregon, and Colorado!

The transformation...

Pre-construction surveying prep before the volunteers arrived

Pre-construction spreading/leveling foundation material

Day 1 construction

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5 - DONE!

The week started off with a ground-breaking ceremony where we buried the "first" rock and broke a bottle of champagne in honor of the start of construction. After the ceremony...the start of pouring 600 square meters of concrete basketball court...

The ground-breaking ceremony

Breaking the customary bottle of champagne

We started by making wooden square forms that we would use to pour the court in a checker-board pattern, never pouring two squares next to each other at the same time. The forms would be re-used as we moved along the court.

Setting up the wooden forms for the concrete

We worked in teams: sand, gravel, water, wheelbarrow, and finishers. Each batch in the concrete mixer required 6 buckets of gravel, 6 buckets of sand, one bucket of water, one bag of cement, and a handful of fiberglass reinforcement. Our time to fill the mixer, 1-minute 5 seconds flat! Each square on the court required 6 batches of concrete from the mixer, and there were 70 squares in total. You can do the math...we had a lot of concrete to mix!! After the first couple pours we were working like a well-oiled machine!

Wheelbarrow line-up

People at the mixing station filling buckets with sand and gravel

Water team transporting buckets of water to re-fill the 55-gallon drums

Pouring the concrete

Leveling the concrete

Finishing the concrete

The volunteers from Kaiser Permanente had brought school supply donations with them, so we were able to visit a local school and share the materials with the kids. The kids were very excited to have visitors!

Back at the site...in preparation for the inauguration ceremony we blew up 30 athletic balls: volleyballs, basketballs, and soccer balls for the inauguration games!

Getting ready for the inauguration

For the inauguration ceremony the volunteers from Kaiser bought two 50 lb pigs that were killed and cooked for the party!

The pigs for the meal

Preparing the food for the ceremony

Cooking the pork

Meanwhile, we were getting the court all ready for the games and the party!

Inauguration Ceremony

Photo with the mayor and the presentation of certificates for all of the participants

No Peruvian party is complete without dancing!

And the rest of the day we played sports until the sun went down

Our project even made the local news!! An article was published in two Trujillo newspapers about our court project in Cerrro Blanco.

After the project was complete we got to spend some time being tourists, we visited our local attraction "Castillo Tomobal" from the Viru Culture, Chan Chan from the Chimu Culture, and Huaca de la Luna of the Moche culture. We enjoyed some ceviche in Huanchano, then it was time to say goodbye!