Cowell is a small farming and seaside town on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia with a population of 800 people. Our main employment is oyster farming, cereal crop farming and the Iron Duke mine 50km away. Youth are limited with recreational activities with the main sports being netball, football and tennis. The youth of Cowell are looking for other activities and with the closest skate park being 100km drive away they started fundraising for their own skate park.
The Cowell Skate Park Fundraising Committee was formed 5 years ago by 5 mothers and community members. They decided the community was in great need for an activity for the local and visiting youth, that gives them a safe place to ride their skateboards and scooters and gets them off the roads and footpaths.
We started raising funds in 2010 with simple things like selling drinks at the local Ute Muster and sausage sizzles. We progressed to social events such as 2 Mini Deb Balls, visiting Whyalla Players, a Mock Wedding, Night of Games and Fun, Baby Fundraising Competition and a Monster Auction. All our hard efforts and community support enabled us to raise $43,000 which was a massive effort for our small community of 800 people.
In January 2015 we applied for a Variety 4WD Bash Grant to which we were successful and we were granted $80,000 to be used within 12 months. We have continued to fundraise whilst waiting for building permission. This has given us the opportunity to work towards a more user friendly and practical upgrade to our final design, however, we still need to raise funds for this dream to become a reality.
We are going to keep fundraising but with our time frame from Variety we need to start building soon. With your pledges of money we hope we can achieve this by March 2016.