BHUBANESWAR: Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation have initiated the process for setting up a one-of-its-kind sensory park for children with special needs in the Capital.
With the vision of making Bhubaneswar, a child-friendly city, accessible for all, BSCL has floated the tender for the proposed sensory park on around 0.4 acre areas in Saheed Nagar. The park would be developed at a cost of around `one crore.
Designed by BDA, through its Bhubaneswar Urban Knowledge Centre (BUKC), the proposed sensory park for children with special needs will have all accessibility features such as ramps and facilities like sand pit and rubber flooring to curb the chances of any injuries on fall during play.
As per the plan, there will be Braille wall and sound wall along with reflexology path specially created integrating soil, grass and pebbles for the visually-challenged children for providing unique sensation to
their feet.
All the play equipment in this park has been designed as per the requirement of differently-abled children. Keeping in view the love of children for swings, the park will have specially designed swings including bucket swings, wheelchair swings and wheelchair merry-go-round which can easily be integrated with wheelchairs.
Besides, there will be ball pool and sand play table to enable children play with sand while seating on wheelchair along with specially designed shoulder builder equipment for doing exercises while sitting on wheelchairs.
A BMC official said the sensory park will have several sound play equipment along with drums, musical poles in order to provide the perfect play ambience for children with special needs.
“Besides the new-age interventions, the park will also have the usual walking paths, ornamental plants, sitting and recreation space for children inside the park to give them a new experience for the first time in the city,” he added.
In a bid to become a child friendly city, BSCL has collaborated with NIUA and Netherland based Bernard Van Leer Foundation to develop Bhubaneswar as child friendly City through strategic interventions in both infrastructure development as well as increased association of children in the development process.