RESEARCH General Home & Garden

RECREATION
Universities team with towns to give kids summer activity programs

Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

7/1/2001

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — llinois is known for its recreation programs. The state’s system of locally run urban park districts is considered among the best in the country.

Most of its thousand-plus small towns, however, don’t have such park systems. And in the summer that means kids in those towns have fewer recreation options.

But in 11 such towns this summer, kids are playing games, involved in arts and crafts, listening to storytellers and music, and going on nature outings. Teens and adults are joining them on trips to baseball games, museums and amusement parks, and at events such as cookouts for the entire community.

The eight-week program is the creation of the Illinois Rural Recreation Development Project, begun in 1995 at the University of Illinois and expanded this year to include Western Illinois University. The program has served a total of 24 communities since its inception. Another university is expected to participate in the program next year, and the consortium, with proper funding, eventually could include all eight Illinois universities that have recreation or leisure studies departments.

The aim of the project is not only to meet a community’s short-term recreation needs, but to plant the seeds for establishing its own summer program and even park district, says Tracey Ciccarelli, the project coordinator, in the UI department of leisure studies. "It brings them not only the knowledge of how to do it, but also it sparks an interest in what these programs can do for their community," she said.

At least three towns that were previous sites already are establishing programs of their own.

The project recruits towns with populations of less than 5,000 that can make the required commitments and understand that it’s a partnership. "The big thing with this program is that if the community’s not interested in it, it’s not going to take off," Ciccarelli said.

Each town must get approval from its town council, establish a board to advise the university student employed as the local director, and raise most of the $8,500 needed. Half of the program is a three-mornings-a-week program for kids ages 6-13, run with help from three youth leaders employed from the community. The other half is whatever the board thinks would most benefit the community.

"I think for quite some time we’ve overlooked the (recreation) needs of small rural communities," said Dan Yoder, a professor in WIU’s department of recreation, parks and tourism administration, and the project administrator there. "We operate under this kind of idyllic myth that kids and families in small rural communities have it pretty well covered … and that simply isn’t the case."

Whether the project expands depends on funding, said Jim Brademas, the project founder and a UI professor emeritus of leisure studies. Most current funds come from a two-year, $180,000 grant from Futures for Kids, a state –funded program chaired by Lura Lynn Ryan, the wife of Gov. George Ryan.

The towns in this summer’s program are Farmer City, Marshall, Newman, Ogden, Tolono and Tuscola, through the UI, and Abingdon, Bushnell, Colchester, Hamilton and Virginia, through WIU.