After our third play park installation in Ishinomaki, we were delighted to receive a phone call from Ishinomaki city hall requesting that we help restore one of their official “public” parks – a major milestone for the Playground of Hope. After visiting the location and speaking with head of the Parks Department, we soon realized that this project was much more complicated any previous locations. To be successful we would require considerably more funding than usual, mainly to hire outside contractors to with heavy equipment and park restoration expertise. There were so many kids living nearby and so much local support that, as difficult this project would be, we couldn’t pass up the exciting opportunity.
We contacted our friends at NADIA NPO and JP Morgan and showed them the park and explained the project. They were excited as we were about the location and promised to fund not only this location but two more in 2013, making JP Morgan our largest donor to-date in the Playground of Hope! Together with 30 JP Morgan employees from their Tokyo office in just 2 days we managed to completely renew the park, complete with new park benches, play equipment, water fountain and barbeque for 200 local residents. An amazing success!
