Theme park under the ground in Damascus

28 Jul 2015

A group of activists working in the institution “Toadua” local charity, established the city for the games under the ground as the “Land of Childhood”, in the city of Arbin in Damascus governorate, in order to secure a suitable atmosphere for children to have fun and play, without fear of the bombing of the Syrian regime, which has been bombing the area for more than 3 years.

The total area of the city about a thousand square meters, which are connected by tunnels to protect children from the shelling, and supervised by specialist engineers working on processing atmosphere relatively close to the atmosphere of the gardens, amid difficulties in securing the necessary materials, under the blockade imposed by the Syrian regime on the eastern Ghouta area (It includes Arbin) more than two years.

The project includes several sections being prepared for children according to their age, it also has a theatre for the presentations, raising awareness lectures, and psychological training and are accessible for reduced fees.

The city can accommodate from 400 to 700 children in all categories, as the project involves an awareness goal for children who have denied them the circumstances from Education, as well as securing work for about fifty people from the region’s population.

According to Abu Ammar al-Haj Ali, Director of Foundation “Toadua,” The creation of a safe area of entertainment and activity for the child and the family, especially with low income families and their standard of living, was the main reason to build a theme park “land of childhood”.

He explained “Most of the families are unable to meet their basic children requirements, how to buy games and entertainment, as schools suffer from a lack of kinetic aspects for the child, and attention to the relationship between the psychological and motor sides, and the activities of unloading the child energies during the war, despite the presence of dozens of volunteers for this work”.

Haj Ali said that “the lack of an appropriate place to make those activities make it limited on colouring and drawing, which moved us after a careful and realistic study, to create a theme park with the aid of specialists in this field”.

Yassin Bushi, supervisor engineer on the project, pointed to the obstacles which faced the project and the most important was to find the appropriate and safe place where eventually two cellar under two separate building were linked with a tunnel to get the required space.

He added, that the second problem they faced, is “to provide the necessary work materials, because of the lack of cement in East Ghouta, what forced us to use mud with straw for finish the building works, while the metals used in the project brought from landfill of metals in the region and recycled to be useable”.