Creating school play equipment to get excited about

Over three days in September 2022 we worked with around 390 Masters students at IE Business School who created some amazing play equipment for children at Colegio Público Santiago Ramón y Cajal in Leganés, Madrid.

We’ve worked with IE for many years but this was the first time we’ve facilitated projects for seven Masters cohorts over three days – three per day – at one site. Although linked practically, each project was bespoke to the respective group.

In total, throughout the month, we worked with 1,030 IE Business School students over 17 days benefiting three charitable organisations.

The students take part in a Splash Project in their onboarding week, so they’d only met the day before.

The objective of the projects revolved around the students forging meaningful connections with one another over an impactful community project, after which, at the ribbon cutting, they got to see the children’s reactions to their efforts.

“When we came through the gates in the morning, the students could see that all the kids had to play with was tyres; they had the space, just no equipment,” said Splash Projects Project Director Colin Robertson, who was the Project Manager for the programme. “They were sitting on the tyres, rolling them around, but that’s about it,” he added.

“The whole time, each day, the kids were in the background looking on at what was going on. We put information boards with the designs on, up around the site so the kids and their parents could see what was being built. This sparked their curiosity even more.

“Logistically, managing seven distinct projects back-to-back was a new challenge for us and challenges popped up throughout the project, but we achieved what we set out to do.

“The headteacher was overwhelmed with what the students created. There is no other school in the area with equipment like it and we’re having lots of enquires now from other schools!”