A wild way to help
Two Rivers Wildlife Park appealing to public for contest votes
It’s hoped the public will climb aboard an online contest for a meaningful project and go wild with their votes.
Two Rivers Wildlife Park manager Johnny Huntington said they’ve been entered in a contest held by Aviva and with the public’s help have a chance to win $50,000 toward a project to help make the park more fun for everyone.
“We need a new playground but the big thing is we want it accessible for people with handicaps and to make our trails even more accessible.” Huntington said they have a lot of organizations that visit the park with people with disabilities who need better accessibility as well as schools.
“It’s important to the park overall that everyone has easy accessibility to everything.”
Huntington said one of the park volunteers Kelly Matheson saw the Aviva contest and entered the park.
“He knew we were trying to raise funds for a new playground and to upgrade our trails for handicap accessibility.”
Huntington said to help, people can visit the Aviva website at https://www.avivacommunityfund.org/voting/project/view/17305 and register, which only takes seconds.
The contest has various categories and funding levels. The park is one of 129 projects entered in the community development category. The park project can be found quickly by searching ‘Two Rivers’ in the search box. Through the course of the contest a person can vote up to 18 times.
“You can make all your 18 votes at one time,” Huntington said.
Huntington said it’s hoped people will jump on board right away as there are only eight days left. As of mid-Wednesday afternoon, the park had 4,343 votes.
“As far as I know we are the only Cape Breton entry in this category and right now we are in second place.”
Huntington said their playground was first built in 1996 at a cost of $32,000, which Sobeys raised for the project.
“All six stores took part in a fundraiser and raised that for the park.”
Huntington said the playground did have some components that were handicap accessible.
“It’s at the point now where it’s old and we had to remove items from the playground because it’s dangerous. Even the accessible components have been depleted now.”
Huntington said they are planning an elaborate playground. As well as the $50,000 they hope to win, the park plans to fundraiser all winter towards their undertaking.
“All our fundraising over the winter will be focused to go towards the playground and upgrades to the trail.”
Huntington said plans include equipment accessible for children with disabilities including swings.
As well, the wildlife trails will be upgraded with more and better gravel, culverts added and more rest spots along the trail and viewing areas to provide people in wheelchairs the opportunity to get up closer.
“We’ve already purchased some gravel to get a start on the trail ourselves.”
Huntington said a lot of the trail was corduroyed, with logs placed down and gravel on top.
“When we’ve had a frost, the logs would shove through them so over the years we’ve been taking the logs out.”
Aviva has provided more than $7.5 million in funding for charitable community initiatives across Canada the past eight years and say through the contest will be investing another $1 million this year.