What will you do when you grow up?

Destiny Park is the first edutainment park in Romania

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 04.07.2023, 14:00

For several months now, an edutainment park in
Bucharest has been encouraging kids to learn by playing, in a centre designed
as a miniature city. Children have a chance to find out what profession they
might be interested in, a more than welcome initiative given that in schools they
usually have access to theoretical, rather than practical information about
various occupations. We talked about the idea with marketing and communication
manager Ana-Maria Pascaru:

Ana-Maria Pascaru: Destiny Park is in fact the first edutainment park in Romania. We
opened it on 2 September, so it’s been 4 months already. We are glad to have
brought this concept to the Romanian market. Learning by playing is a
relatively new concept in our country and it somehow completes the non-formal
education kids are getting outside school curricula. We target children aged 4
to 14, which is quite a large age group, and our main goal, as I was saying, is
to educate by play. The centre is basically a miniature city, or as we like to
say, a city run by children. There is an industrial area, with places where
children learn, for instance, about furniture manufacturing, or about dairy
processing or about agriculture and what the agriculture of the future will
look like. There is another area focusing on medicine, with a dental clinic and
a hospital with several wards, including a surgery section, an emergency room,
a neonatal unit and ambulance service. In all these areas, we teach children
what certain professions are about. Obviously, we only cover the basics, we
given children some information, but we do it through play, which makes it easier
and more fun for kids to learn.

The marketing and communication manager Ana-Maria
Pascaru highlighted the novelty that the experiences in this centre brings to
children’s lives:

Ana-Maria Pascaru: If you remember, in the past there were visits to parents’ workplaces.
I understand this is still a thing, but not in all companies. Destiny Park is
the place where many children get in touch with certain professions for the
first time. These professions cover a wide range, from the IT sector to
medicine, agriculture, industry, chemistry lab, airplane pilot and so on. And
it’s all very attractive to them, because they play and they learn.

The project initiators also thought about
getting children familiar with the concept of social responsibility, so a
number of projects are under way, in which kids are encouraged to contribute:

We
are running several campaigns of Environmental Corporate Social
Responsibility. We started off even before opening the park, even in
the pandemic we had some activities with the Grigore Alexandrescu
hospital for children, then, in August, before opening, we had 2
weeks when we had 2,500 children visiting, children from
disadvantaged backgrounds, or children with disabilities, with free
access. This project continues. In December we started gathering what
we call magic money. Magic money is the currency of our little city.
Kids who enter the part, based on the ticket they purchased, get a
check, then some magic money. The first lesson is the economy lesson,
as we call it. The moment when they get this money, they can attend
certain activities. For the fun ones they have to pay, and for the
ones they work in they get paid a wage. The magic money represent the
Destiny Park currency, and we thought it would be nice to encourage
kids to donate, to learn civic spirit, to learn that giving is
beautiful, and giving to kids of lower means is something they should
do. As a result, we started setting aside money from kids. If they
run out of money at the end of their experience, when the park tour
ends, they can donate it, or take it home and use it again when they
come back. This is how we started gathering magic money, and our
foundation, through this gesture that is, after all, symbolic, turns
magic money into tickets for disadvantaged children.

Kids
come here to have fun, but they learn that work is very important
too:

Some
only work, others only try to have fun, but, as I told you, at some
point they run out of money and have to work. They can’t ask their
parents for money, because everything happens with magic money. We
have two kinds of tickets: three and a half hours, or a full day.
Most parents, especially on their first visit to the park, take the
three and a half hour experience, since each experience is between 15
and 20 minutes. Upon entering, the kids can have a tour of the park.
This is what we advise them and their parents, so they can see what
they would like to do. So, one they get it, they pick and choose
their activities, where they want to go, and usually many of them are
very happy to work, because they are proud of getting a salary.

Ana-Maria
Pascaru told us what older children enjoy and choose to do:

The
older ones, between 10 and 14, head to the more fun or more
interesting activities. For instance, the Aviation Academy is a very
popular area with older children, because we have two real flight
simulations, where the older children love playing. This is a very
desirable area for the older kids, the same as the hospital area, or
the Formula 1 simulator area.

We
found out that most guides in the park know English, but many or them
also speak Russian or French, so that the park is welcoming for
children of various nationalities.