By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
CENTRAL Dandenong’s social soccer hub Pop-Up Park has an uncertain future despite its heady popularity with young people.
The park’s artificial soccer court and raised vegie garden were envisaged as temporary when the park opened in 2011.
Though in some disrepair, the park has blossomed into a vital youth hub that would be a shame to lose, say some of its regular users.
Situated opposite Dandenong railway station, the park has outlasted its expected lifetime of between one and three years.
Centre for Multicultural Youth organises soccer games that attract up to 70 players – ranging from teens to thirty-somethings – two evenings a week.
Recently unemployed player Abdul said the park is in the “best spot in central Dandenong”.
“I come here just to have fun and get stuff off my mind.”
Fellow player John Langalanga said he had rarely played in any other place for the past four years but for basketball at Hemmings Park.
“It’s multicultural. You get to learn a new language, learn a new culture.”
The soccer ‘coach’ and facilitator Junior Melo brings in music speakers and pumps up a vibrant, safe atmosphere for players and non-players.
Mr Melo said soccer was an ice-breaker, a safe place where young people could put aside their troubles and have fun.
It was an opportunity to point some disengaged youth – addled with childhood traumas, disadvantage, and drug and alcohol issues – into counselling, training and employment services.
“It would be sad to take this place out,” Mr Melo said.
CMY project officer Placid Jayasuriya said it had been a place for youngsters of a wide range of nationalities to develop leadership skills and respect for one another.
Some of the older players, such as a recent law graduate, are role-models on and off the pitch.
Its soccer games started as a program for unaccompanied minors but it had opened up – partly because the park was “such a great place”.
“It’s one of the few places in Melbourne where you have a proper soccer court available for free.”
Mr Jayasuirya said there was enough demand to run youth projects at the park five days a week if the CMY had enough funding.
Mr Melo piped in: “You can’t measure how this place effects participants at all levels. I see kids come here who are sad at home leave in a different mood.”
Greater Dandenong Council runs the park on behalf of the site’s owner – State Government developer Places Victoria.
The council’s Greater Dandenong Business group manager Paul Kearsley said the park was “testament to the benefits it has provided to the local community”.
“Activating this land and making it available for the short term benefit of the community rather than fencing it off and leaving it vacant was a fantastic initiative.”
The park would remain available “until either funds no longer exist or development of the site occurs”.
The site’s fate would be decided by Places Victoria, which had compulsorily acquired the land to “facilitate urban renewal”, he said.
Mr Kearsley said an alternative site for a similar project would be investigated when and if the park was redeveloped.
