Colour a child's life
On Friday 4 June 2010, 11 volunteers from BDB joined forces with the charity Kids Company to participate in the charity’s ‘Colour a Child’s Life’ project. The aim of this project is to help underprivileged families create a happier and healthier home environment for their children – a safe haven from some of the difficult experiences they encounter in their lives. Our task was to redecorate the home of one such family in Peckham. We were asked to clean and repaint the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and also tame the rather wild garden, so it was a very busy day.
We arrived at the house at 10am and, met the single mother and her three children who lived there. Soon afterwards, and slightly daunted by the amount of work we had to get through, we split into groups to tackle the various tasks we had been set. Some of us were redecorating the living room, which the family wanted us to paint sky blue, others were painting the bedroom pink, and the final group set to the garden, which was completely overgrown. In the afternoon, we also repainted the kitchen.
By the end of the day, there was a marked improvement in those rooms which we had redecorated and in the garden. The house felt like a much cleaner and happier environment for children to live in, and when the family came to inspect our work, Changing Rooms style, they were genuinely happy with the changes that had been made. Kids Company will now continue to monitor the family, and will work more closely with the children.