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"What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print."
--Isadora Duncan
1877-1927
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Palo Alto Daily News
May 23, 2005
by Masha Rumer
Daily News Staff Writer
Local Provides Place to Play
Tsunami inspires largesse
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John Moretti, a Palo Alto resident, was always a risk taker. He led crews into forest fires as a fire captain, helped people in danger as a heavy rescue technician, and traveled the world with his camera and insatiable curiosity.
Yet it wasn’t until one of the worst disasters of the century hit – the tsunami in Southeast Asia – that Moretti had an epiphany after making a donation to the Red Cross.
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“As I sat on my couch watching the news, I felt that there was something more that I could do,” Moretti said. “Seven days later I found myself on a plane to Thailand.”
Moretti spent two and a half weeks traveling all over the disaster-struck areas, helping build refugee camps, repair Buddhist temples, and working with kids, many of whom have lost homes and families.
Back in California, he couldn’t stop comparing the local kids to the Thai refugee children: “They don’t have anybody to take them by the hand and take them to a playground. So I said, ‘I’ll build a playground.’”
And this is how Operation Playground started.
Moretti is now designing children’s playgrounds for three devastated areas in Thailand: Phuket Island, Baan Nam Khem, a mostly Burmese fisherman refugee camp, and Ban Muang camp of displaced families. He is applying his engineering experience, investigating local playgrounds, researching safety regulations, and honing language skills. He dedicates several hours daily to this self-funded project, on top of his full-time job.
“I envision a playground to be fairly similar to what we see here,” Moretti says, but is designing with the cultural standards in mind. Each will have a swingset, a slide, a merry-go-round, monkey bars, and sand pit, among other things. “It should be something that the children will enjoy. They’re very grateful for what they have, no matter how insignificant it may seem to me or to somebody else,” he says.
Moretti will purchase all equipment and materials in Bangkok when he returns there in November. The local governments are providing the sites. He has already found support in Thailand and plans to hire building and construction crews, paying them standard wages. The project is set to be completed by the end of February 2006.
Moretti is raising funds which, he says, are going to be 100% towards the project. He is also selling his photographs from Thailand, some of which are exhibited at the Plantation Café on California Avenue in Palo Alto. Charles Lee, owner of Plantation Café, believes “it would be good for customers to come in and see first hand what happened in the disaster.”
Moretti is encouraging donations and volunteer help with the building. “We become disconnected from what really happens,” he says, “I encourage anybody to take time to do something that would forever change their lives, because it changed mine,” says Moretti.
For more information about Operation Playground or to get involved, visit www.operationplayground.com. |
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