SURREY — A Newton elementary school has finally got the playground it fought so hard to get, and celebrated the acquisition in grand style Tuesday afternoon.
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W.E. Kinvig’s 280 students served up the $125,000 playground’s official ribbon cutting ceremony with cake, candy canes, and a rock concert in the auditorium and speeches.
“We’ve really been hoping for a second playground in the back of our school,” principal Jas Atwal told the Now-Leader.
“Some people have taken the school under their wing and they’ve been able to contact people they know. They ran some fundraisers and were disappointed not to receive a grant from one of our previous tries, but based on what we could do in the community we really came together, our kids are extremely excited about getting a chance to play and we are one of the only playgrounds in the Surrey school district that will have a rubberized floor, and that’s new too.”
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Kinvig tweet
Teresa Penner, who organized the ceremony, said “of course they’ve been waiting for years for this playground but the project has been about two years in the making. We needed to celebrate in a big way because this is an amazing thing, and when a community comes together, big things happen.”
Many donors, including the Rick Hansen Foundation, helped make it possible.
Her Brothers
(The band Her Brothers help W.E. Kinvig elementary school students in Newton celebrate their new $125K playground on Tuesday. (Photo: Tom Zytaruk).
Before the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the students enjoyed a concert by Her Brothers, a band that did a fundraiser for the playground last year.
Gabe Penner, lead singer and guitarist, recalled that when his band was asked to do the fundraiser, “We were like, ‘We’re in.’ We decided to do it because there is something profound when people come together. For us it was just something really close to our hearts.
“We do a lot of stuff with schools and with kids and what-not, and for us it was like, raising money for a playground for an elementary school was just like another great opportunity to give back to the community.”
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