Proceeds benefit renovations at Beacon Tot Park
In the fall of 2005, a group of Beacon women, all with young children, organized a tag sale to raise money for the fledgling Wee Play Community Project.
In the weeks before the sale, donated items were sorted at the home of a volunteer, transported to another volunteer’s garage and then sold and removed in a single day. The $1,000 it generated went toward constructing the Wee Play Tot Park, a fenced play area in Memorial Park that opened the following spring through a partnership with the Beacon Recreation Department.
Now in its 20th year, Wee Play’s Ree-Play sale will be held April 26 to 28 at University Settlement Camp, its home since 2010. It will support the rebuilding of the Tot Park, which has been closed since February but is expected to reopen in May with new fencing, play structures, benches and picnic tables.
In addition, poured rubber will replace the torn turf, a new entryway will be installed and a garden will be planted and maintained through a partnership with the Green Teen program.
The sale has grown tremendously in its two decades. After last year’s event, Wee Play contributed $31,000 to the Tot Park project and awarded grants to the Howland Public Library, Compass Arts, Fareground Food + Community and the parent-teacher organizations at all six of Beacon’s public schools.
Shoppers will find gently used (and sometimes new) children’s clothing, baby gear, books, games, sports and outdoor play equipment and maternity wear. The goods fill nearly every inch of table and floor space in the Settlement Camp’s theater building and overflow into the adjacent lawn.
More than a dozen volunteers and the seven members of the Wee Play board have spent the last month collecting, cleaning and sorting 3,000 square feet of merchandise, said Lauren McEvoy, the sale’s director.
McEvoy notes that the sale allows young parents to shop sustainably. “There is so much waste in the baby space,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see all this not go into a landfill.”
The Ree-Play sale will be held at University Settlement Camp in Beacon from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on April 26, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on April 27 and from noon to 4 p.m. on April 28. Use the Beacon Pool entrance from Route 9D and follow the signs to the theater building.
