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Bottom-up or top-down: the case of the playground
In Mbare, there is a large playground. It was made from 2016-18 through a communityled initiative, Team Up 2 Clean Up.
The TU2CU consists of youth from Mbare (through I AM MBARE) and youth from Roman Catholic Church. They started the initiative in order to come together in cleaning Mbare. The continuous clean up campaigns led to the formation of Team Up 2 Clean Up, a community organisation.
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TU2CU was working on finding sustainable solutions in curbing continuous litter challenges in the community. The youths identified a dumping site at Matererini Flats which they wanted to turn into a children’s playground. Youths advocated to the council to get their idea realised. In 2016, the creation of the playground began. Young people worked tirelessly everyday on the playground with several setbacks faced through lack of resources and political hostility. In 2018 the playground was finally finished and it was opened for children to play. The bottom-up approach had given the community a strong ownership of the space. It was a space that belonged to the community and they took care of the space, as they had built it themselves. The community was watching over it and kept it clean and tidy.
In January 2019 the First Lady and the government helped with maintenance of the recreational park. They built new facilities for the playground and claimed to be the one who had built the recreational park. They published the news of the playground as their work entirely, without crediting the community organisations and volunteers who had built the space in the first place. The efforts of the government and their proclaimed ownership was met with resistance from the community. The community denied the claim and demanded ownership.
Today, the park is deteriorating, as the community have lost their sense of ownership towards the space. The top-down approach led by the government, has given them the feeling that it does not belong to the community anymore. The playground is an example of the importance of bottom-up approaches is crucial in community building. Source: local stories
BEFORE THE PLAYGROUND
AFTER THE PLAYGROUND
