Playground Designer

One day in 2014, Pooja Rai was volunteering at a school for underprivileged children in India. She saw some kids playing in the yard—but there was no playground. The kids were playing with garbage, like broken pipes and discarded shoes. These children deserve a safe space to play, Rai thought.

At the time, Rai was in college studying architecture, the design of buildings and other structures. She teamed up with her classmates to brainstorm how to create a safe playground for the school. To save money, they decided to build the slides, swings, and other play structures by reusing materials like worn-out tires. The team finished the playground in 2015.

Two years later, Rai founded Anthill Creations, a nonprofit organization that builds safe, sustainable playgrounds. So far, the group has completed more than 300 play spaces across India. Rai recently spoke with SuperScience about her work. 

When we started, we didn’t have money for materials. But we knew we could get objects like tires from landfills or from companies that were throwing them away. By using trashed materials, we solve two problems. We reduce waste and make something useful.

Tires are also durable—they last a long time. And they don’t have sharp edges, so they’re safe to play on. We use materials like bamboo and wood too, but tires have been the best material so far. 

We use a lot of kids’ ideas in our designs. We play games with children in the community or school to see what they are interested in. We have used tires to build cameras, elephants, rocket ships, and octopuses!

It took three months to build our first playground. Today, it takes about five to seven days. We send one person from our team to lead construction. They work with the community to put the play structures together and paint them bright colors. We build a boundary wall around our playgrounds to keep kids safe. We also test our structures to make sure they’re stable. 

Play is a natural way for children to learn all kinds of social skills. I’ve seen children waiting their turn, helping each other, and resolving fights on our playgrounds. We want children to learn, but we also want learning to be fun!