Roll On Smokefree Skate Parks
If you want to find out the best place to put up smokefree signs around skateparks and playgrounds – ask the kids that use them.
Smokefree Marlborough and the Marlborough Smokefree Youth Ambassadors are supporting Marlborough District Councils to implement a smokefree parks and playgrounds policy by finding out the most suitable design and placement of smokefree signage for parks and playgrounds.
During the school holidays and in their own time, five of the youth ambassadors visited Blenheim, Renwick and Picton skateparks. They talked to skate-park users and scoped the parks for strategic sign placement from a ‘youth’ perspective. “We thought about putting them in places where they’d be really visible but safe from vandalism,” said Lamosa Tepu and Haraia Rangi.
In June this year, the Marlborough Smokefree Youth Ambassadors made an invaluable presentation to the Marlborough District Council in support of Smokefree Marlborough’s submission for Smokefree parks, playgrounds and open space reserves in Marlborough.
The Youth Ambassadors appeal won an extremely positive response from the councillors, with Mayor Alistair Sowman saying that Council was willing to look at how to extend Council’s existing smokefree policy to include parks and playgrounds in Marlborough.
Marlborough Smokefree Youth Ambassadors (back row: Lamosa Tepu, Pieter Bexvidenhout, Billy Ridgway, Haraia Rangi, Teresa Goza - Cancer Society, Josh Pope) talk with local Renwick skatepark users.
