BACKGROUND

Have you ever noticed that there are no dedicated parks or cultural spaces for children in Juba, the capital city of South Sudan? Have you ever asked yourself why --with the ''gold rush'' in full swing and with land sales happening all over the city and 1/5-star hotels cropping up almost daily-- children play (or rather work) largely on the margins of life: in the trash heaps and dusty parking lots of the country's adults and vip's?

Was that our Independence?

We at the Children's Pavilion and Interactive Landscape believe that the health and sustainability of a nation can be directly gauged by the vitality and well-being of its children. Today in South Sudan children are the most impressionable and vulnerable of citizens, especially given the country's long history of war. With a shaky economy driven by oil and the enormous financial demands of physical reconstruction and security, investment in the country's children -and the activities that promote their growth- easily gets pushed to the margins of national budgets, with international agencies often seen as being ''responsible'' for the care of the nation's children (feeding, schooling, medical treatment, protection, etc.). While ''partnership'' is fine, we at CP believe that South Sudanese themselves must put their children -all of the country's children- first on the national agenda. In line with the best of our traditions, we must continue to take responsibility for the children we create!

As a step in this direction, CP proposes to create a safe, colorful, interactive playspace in the capital city, Juba, and to design activities within it that encourage ''organic'' thinking and analysis, creative problem-solving...and most of all PLAY!

The Pavilion will serve as an alternative to the often rote instruction of the South Sudanese classroom and the often too-heavy obligations of the home. As a hub for children, it will be a precursor to a National Children's Museum and will be the first of its kind in South Sudan.

OBJECTIVES

to create a safe cultural play space (or two!) for children in the new country's landscape;
to allow children to explore, define and share in the building of a new nation;
to encourage children to create content for a future National Children's Museum as well as a living monument and memorial to the contribution of children to the Liberation Struggle;
to develop a model for child play spaces that can be replicated in other states;
to transmit culture and heritage and promote well-being through theatre, film, music, language and the arts;
to discourage the labels of 'street,' 'school,' 'town,' 'village,' 'elite,' 'poor,' 'diasporan,' 'internally displaced,' by building on the early capacity of children for tolerance and their ability to play with one another without discrimination;
to create relevant methodologies for nurturing children in South Sudan.