President of the once vibrant Paradise Bachelor’s Adventure Community Centre Sports Club Esse Peters is calling on the government to help bring the venue back to a standard that the community can be proud of and use to improve their lives.
Stabroek Sport visited the East Coast Demerara-based facility yesterday and sat down with Peters, president of the newly installed committe who spoke of the importance of the ground.
Peters said that he has been a member of the community for over 15 years but with the committee taking new leadership two months ago, he felt this was the right time to ring in the changes.
He explained that it the community has been labelled a depressed area with a lot of the younger folks turning to negative influences.
The ground, he said, provided a safe environment for the community to dwell and engage in meaningful activities.
Peters recalled that at the height of the ground’s glory days, around 150 children were actively using the facility.
The club, he said, fielded two football teams, a cricket team, a volleyball team, a rugby team and an athletics unit.
Additionally, the club has served the community’s older residents by providing a safe environment for them to get their daily exercise.
Now, because of the overgrown bushes and dilapidated infrastructure, the ground has fallen from grace.
“People used to come in the afternoon and run, police, government workers, mothers everybody used to come and train but with these big bushes snake and so could dwell here so nobody comes now,” Peters told this publication.
Peters said that he noted the commendable work Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Charles Ramson Jnr., has been doing in relation to assisting grounds with facelifts and distribution of lights.
He is issuing an invitation for the Minister to come and see the state of the venue. He also listed a number of things that the committee finds paramount to the ground’s development.
“At the moment what we need is the Minister to come and assist we with putting down two dressing rooms nothing big but you know somewhere where the players could change. We need lights, about 10 lights would be good, we will find we own the poles, we gone pay for we wire. You see the fence, we don’t have money to fix it but it is really in a bad state and you see the bush how it high, we need badly a cutter for the ground. We will put things in place and do we own fundraisers. We would be very happy if the minister could help us with these things,” Peters said.
Peters stressed the positive effect the ground has, highlighting that apart from community members and village children, “a lot of schools, both private and public had access to the venue free of cost, only a small fee was charged to clean up and if they did it themselves they get back the deposit.”
