What a playground and a dinosaur can teach us about fostering community

Nobody is too old (or too young, for that matter) to enjoy a good trip to the playground, and that’s especially true for the fun and community-minded students at Lakes Region Community College. The average age of an LRCC student is 29. Some of our youngest students are high-school age, taking advantage of programs we have in communities across the state for those who wish to accelerate their academic journey. And our most mature student clocks in at about 65 million years old. Recently, we all got together for a day in the park.

I use the term “student” here loosely, because LRCC’s unofficial mascot, #RexGoesToCollege, doesn’t technically meet our enrollment criteria. He comes from the late Cretaceous period, where transcripts are hard to come by, but his ability to inspire us and the community at large earned Rex a spot in a recent volunteer excursion.

Our friends at Lakes Region Community Developers, who build affordable housing options for working families, needed a little help finishing up a playground installation at their Lochmere Meadows in Tilton. Affordable housing means the home’s rental costs are deemed "affordable" to a group of low-to-moderate-income households within a specific income range for their household size. It’s an important part of solving New Hampshire’s workforce development challenges by increasing the number of housing options families can afford, that are near the companies needing employees.

Over the last few months, the playground has taken shape thanks to many volunteers from dozens of organizations throughout the state who donated time and materials to the project. We were honored to get the call and quickly assembled a group of volunteers ready to work – and perhaps test out the swingsets and slide, if time allowed, of course.

We completed our work and got to know each other a little better in the process.

Communities form in many shapes and sizes: they can be apartment complexes, professional connections, or school groups, and they often include people you may not be used to hanging around with. But when we are united by common mission – in our case, completing a brand-new playground for children of all ages to enjoy and use to create their own sense of community – we can start to understand the common language of encouragement and inspiration.

And that’s what we try to create at LRCC.

In addition to preparing students for credentialing exams or starting new careers in the high-tech workforce, we also consider how students will use their new skills in their communities. Will they teach volunteer CPR classes after graduating from our Fire Science Associate Degree Program, which ranks fifth in the entire nation? Will they take it upon themselves to give back to the communities that supported them throughout their personal and professional journeys? We hope so.

We hope every student finds their calling and the passion to achieve their goals at LRCC, where the opportunity to pursue both is part of our culture. And for those who haven’t figured out what they want to do yet? We have an opening for an intern in our Marketing Committee because, really, have you ever seen a T-Rex try to type?

Larissa Baía is the president of Lakes Region Community College, a fully accredited, comprehensive community college in the Lakes Region that serves over 1,200 students annually.