Changing Faces Competition
Helping Nairobi's neighborhoods to become better places for children.
We Play and Public Space Network work together to build great open spaces in Nairobi
Update, February 2024
The five selected teams further developed their neighbourhood space with help trainings and workshops facilitated by Pubic Space Network (PSN) in 2022 and 2023. We Play collected and sent about eighty Englisch language children books for the neighbourhood playspace that contains a small library. The books were donated thanks to Biblionef Foundation in the Netherlands.
Previous update:
Five teams have been selected for the second phase of the competition. They are given the opportunity to further develop their plans for a safe, accessible and inclusive public space in their neighborhood. We Play has decided to give support to all five teams, because all have child-friendly elements as part of their plans. The support will help them to build a sustainable place that is well-managed and maintained by the community among others through practical workshops. The projects are spread accross Nairobi, but all are located in poor neighborhoods.
More information about the five teams, their projects and location: www.publicspacenetwork.org/about-cfc.
Background
There is a rising demand for cleaner, safer and greener public spaces in Nairobi and other urban areas in Kenya. City planners and designers all know by now that these public spaces are a key component to the success of healthy cities. However due to different reasons, the city administration is slow in creating these needed public spaces. Therefore citizens of especially poorer neighborhoods in Nairobi joined forces a few years ago to transform by themselves neglected open spaces into small parks, play areas for children, court yards, walkways, river banks etc.
Public Space Network (PSN) is a Nairobi-based organization that promotes clean, green, vibrant and safe cities and connects citizens and their communities with builders, designers and other experts by initiating the so-called Changing Faces Competition (CFC). By helping to transform Nairobi PSN hopes to transform the lives of its citizens in a positive way.
The idea behind CFC is to support the neighborhoods in their efforts to transform the open areas into clean, green and safe community spaces. Different communities are invited to use all their creativity and community spirit to compete with each other for the most beautiful open space. The best initiatives will be shortlisted and nominated for awards.
After 4 successful editions of CFC mobilizing over 4.000 participants who transformed over 200 spaces and positively impacted more than 200.000 users of public spaces, CFC is scaling up further. In the 5th edition CFC will emphasize the capacity-building dimension of the participating teams.
CFC consists of two phases: In the first phase, which started in October 2020, any community group is invited to participate and initiate the transformation of a public open space using their creativity and locally available low-cost material. At the end of this phase, foreseen for the end of December 2020, a selection is made of the 5 best performing teams. In the second phase these best performing teams will be closely accompanied by PSN to uplift their transformations into real masterpieces. Mentors, such as public space experts and urban planners, will support with advise and training this creative process and other partners will help search for seed funding.
Teams can compete in different categories based on the type of spaces they choose to transform. One of them is the Most child-friendly space, where teams attempt to create a safe space that is enjoyable for children to play on, relax, learn and interact with each other and overall creates an enabling environment for children. Check out this video presenting the winner of the Most child-friendly space award from the 4th edition of the Changing Faces Competition.
The goals of the Changing Faces Competition perfectly fit We Play’s objective to contribute to harmonious and sustainable communities by supporting green and safe play areas for children. Therefore We Play fully supports the competition, especially the creation child-friendly spaces.
If you are also excited about the competition, you can help us by giving your support and make a donation. We Play will use your donation to help realize the most child-friendly places in Nairobi.
More information about the Changing Faces Competition:
www.publicspacenetwork.org/about-cfc
www.weplayfoundationnl.org
