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Chesapeake community helps give 8-year-old girl handicap-accessible playground

Posted at 3:24 PM, Aug 05, 2012
and last updated 2012-08-05 16:46:03-04

A Chesapeake community took action to make a dream come true for an eight-year-old girl with spina bifida.

Nadia Zaichenko is wheelchair-bound and can’t play on most public swing sets.  After a large fundraising effort, she now has a handicap-accessible playground in her own background.

Numerous donors helped raise nearly $7,000 for the swing set, including the We Promise Foundation, the Great Bridge United Methodist Church, Lane Construction Company and a group of boy scouts.  Some of her classmates even held lemonade stands and donated birthday money to help out.

Her friends and family joined her on the new playground Saturday after it was unveiled.

“We are so blessed.  We can say now when she asks ‘can I go play?,’ I can say, ‘yes Nadia, you can go play,’ and to see her go out the door head down the ramp and all the way around the pathway just on her own, it is just an amazing blessing to see my little girl play,” said her mom, Shannon Zaichenko.