HOLIDAY PLAY CENTRES [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—As Chairman of the Evening Play Centres Committee, may I inform your readers that we arranged with the London County Council to open nineteen of the school playgrounds situated in the poorest and most crowded districts of London as Holiday Play Centres during the whole of the approaching summer holidays ? We have undertaken to provide a Super- • intendent and a skeleton staff of helpers at each playground, together with a full equipment of games, and we expect an attendance of some 600--800 children a day at most of them. For, in spite of the fact that larger numbers of children get away for a week or a fortnight than did fifteen years ago, when Mrs. Humphry Ward first started these Holiday Play- grounds, there are still hundreds of thousands left behind, and it is for these that we provide simple games and occupa- tions, gathering them out of the hot and dusty streets. Last year I appealed in the Spectator for a few weekly hampers of flowers, from the fortunate possessors of country gardens, to brighten these rather dreary asphalt grounds and enable each child to take home, once a week, a little bunch of country flowers ; four ladies responded, and I think that if those who did not could have seen the delight caused by the arrival of those hampers they would have hastened to follow the ex- - ample of the four ! Would they, then, kindly do so this year ? The Play Centres open on July 20th for four weeks. All hampers will, of course, be returned.
And besides the flowers, we are greatly in need of some regular voluntary helpers, for the more helpers we have the more children we can take in ; and we also want a little more money. We have budgeted, in our estimate for the year, for a limited amount to be spent on these Holiday Centres, but the amount is very limited, and an additional £100 would make all the difference. We could do more for the big boys, and more for the " little mothers." Would any reader of the Spectator Who feels moved to help in any of these directions kindly communicate with me, cfo Evening Play Centres, The Mary Ward Settlement, Tavistock Place, W.C. 1 ?- I am, Sir, &c.,
JANET P. TREVELYAN.
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