Giving new life to old sport gear
A new community group collecting used sports gear to recycle to children who don’t have access to their own is asking for public donations.
Denise Mclean started Replay in February after a discussion with her family about what they should do with sports gear they no longer needed.
After having a cleanout of their gear, she and husband Andrew Mclean and their daughters Millie Mclean, 8, and Lucy Mclean, 11, all sat down to talk about how they could make sure this gear went directly into kids’ hands.
Out of that came the idea to call schools and see if there was interest in having the used sports gear so they could distribute it to other children.
After receiving great feedback from schools, Denise Mclean got in touch with other organisations she thought could donate goods. They also put donation bins out.
Mclean said they decided to create a bundle in a bag to give to kids, which included a ball, dome cones, chalk and a small fact sheet about some of the activities they could do with what was in the bag.
The domes, chalk and donation bins were all bought by the Mclean family, with Millie and Lucy donating out of their own pocket money.
As the idea had grown from donating a corner worth of sports gear to having almost 400 pieces to donate, Mclean approached Sport Manawatu¯ , which was keen to get involved.
They set up bins for donations in Palmerston North and Feilding and Mclean said they were hoping the public would donate old gear.
‘‘If it fits in a bin, bring it in,’’ she said.
At present all the gear was being stored in their family garage, with the cars relegated to the driveway.
They are using November to do a donation drive in the hope they can get the gear out to kids for Christmas and the holidays.
As well as working with schools to distribute gear, they are also linking up with Sport Manawatu¯ ’s Active Families programme to redistribute some of the gear.
The bins for old sports gear are located in Pita Pits in Palmerston North, the Feilding Library, Sport Manawatu¯ in Palmerston North and the Massey University Recreation centre.