Ladder Award: Martin Coffey for offering to help pay to re-build local pool

6th February 2010

This weeks Ladder is awarded to Martin Coffey, an 86 year resident of St Albans, Christchurch New Zealand, for offering to put millions of dollars of his own money into re-building his local community pool, so local people, especially local children, have a swimming pool in their neighbourhood.

Mr Coffey was upset when the City Council decided not to keep Edgeware Pool, where he had swum as a child. He recalls having “happy memories” saying,

I used to swim there as a boy. In summer I would be there every day of the week and three times on Sundays, when I would climb over the fence. Nobody minded. In my day, everywhere you lived there was a swimming pool. See Christchurch Press 01-02-2010

The Ladder is given to Martin Coffey because of his generosity and the way he acknowledges how he benefited from a community which had a pool where he could swim. We think it wonderful he is happy to invest his own money so local children can experience similar benefits.

Mr Coffey says he worries about the kids who can’t afford transport to travel to the now more distant swimming pools, and feels that “children should not be charged to have a swim.”

The Ladder is also awarded for his refreshing insight that providing local swimming pools (one local people can walk to) will help, in his words, “keep kids off the street” which is another way of saying, “keeping kids out of trouble.”

In New Zealand much concern is expressed about troubled children who are described as being anti-social, alienated, often over-weight and often unable to swim. Many seem to be happy to support policy and funding for intervention programmes so ‘experts’ can work with these troubled young people. Yet there doesn’t appear to be much policy support for investment in local community amenities, such as local pools, where children can have the opportunity to be active and to play together, (much of learning to swim is playing) to get to know each other, and so feel they belong in their local community.

I think children need safe local places for active free play so they can learn how to be social beings who are comfortable with one another. What do you think?

And what do you think also about the move to having more centralized large complexes, as opposed to having local amenities, such as pools?

Similar posts

• Shovel Award: for digging community into a bureaucratic hole
• Shovel Award: for cutting community amenity budgets and calling it visionary
• Ladder Award to James Flynn – practical social science to replace populist fear
• Clare Cooper Marcus on “The Needs of Children in Contemporary Cities”
• The Unworthy Tree – a creative filmed story of a successful local development project

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Tags: bureaucracy, care, community, community development, experts, intervention, investment, Ladder Award, local amenities, Local Government, needs, play, village

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One Response to “Ladder Award: Martin Coffey for offering to help pay to re-build local pool”

1. Molly says:

   March 26, 2010 at 10:57 am

   Martin Coffey is a rare and special individual. I wish there were more people like him. Don’t ever give up fighting for what you believe is right. See what can happen when you hang in there. And yesterday, the community of St Albans won the tender to develop the land for a new pool to replace the one bulldozed by the city council in 2006. Well done everyone! And shame on those representatives in local government who have not only tried to stop this wonderful initiative but one who actually voted against it at the deciding meeting yesterday – what were you thinking?

 

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