Whatshot
New sports field for St Anthony's
New sports field for St Anthony's
Denis Hurley Centre brings together a school and a business to promote sport in the inner city: The Denis Hurley Centre has a reputation for enabling partnerships to help improve Durban. They were therefore pleased to bring together two parties and facilitate a new sports field that will benefit hundreds of children in the inner city.
St Anthony's Primary, next door to Greyville racecourse, has over 700 learners. It is a Catholic School (with which late Archbishop Hurley was closely associated) though only 10% of learners are themselves Catholic. Their older learners regularly volunteer at the Denis Hurley Centre and collect food to help the homeless. St Anthony's has a long association with the Durban Indian community. It now also welcomes many Zulu children and learners from other African countries. It is on a large site but has had very little usable grass on which the children could play.
But that has all changed thanks to Urban Lime, a property company specialising in urban regeneration. Urban Lime also work closely with the Denis Hurley Centre having helped set up the PaperMoney programme and supporting other initiatives to get homeless people into work. Urban Lime have gifted to the school a piece of astro-turf over 450 square metres in size. This was formerly used by Urban Lime in the iconic Church Square in Cape Town for a cultural event hosted earlier in the year.
The turf was officially opened today (Thurs 27 Sept) by Raymond Perrier, Director of the Denis Hurley Centre and Nad Shahid, Managing Director of Urban Lime Durban. Nad was a professional cricketer for a top English club and so knows from his own experience the importance of children playing sport from a young age.
Principal, Bernadene Velusamy, said that the learners were thrilled at the extra space for play and sports. It will be named the Fr Sabon Turf after the priest who founded the school 130 years ago.