Whistlerites Keith Reynolds and Kirby Brown departed last week on a month-long journey that will take them to at least four countries in Asia and the Middle East.

While the trek might loosely be defined as a sort of jet-setting, their purpose is anything but glamorous or fun. It’s 100 per cent humanitarian.

The two board members for the three-year-old, Whistler-based charity Playground Builders planned to visit Kabul and Herat in Afghanistan, the central Asian countries of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza as part of the growing, B.C.-based effort to promote peace through play in some of the world’s most war-torn regions.

“‘We live in the land of play. It’s time to export play,’” Reynolds, who founded Playground Builders in 2007, said on Thursday (Oct. 21), repeating what has become something of a mantra for the group and its supporters.

On the journey’s first leg, though, and probably elsewhere as well, the security situation was expected to be dodgy at best. When he set about arranging the visit to Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, Reynolds said he initially proposed staying at the headquarters of a non-governmental organization (NGO) that runs an orphanage there.

But leaders of the NGO, one of the many locally based groups with which Playground Builders has been working, requested that he and Brown stay at a downtown hotel instead.

“The safety issues there have deteriorated to the point that the local NGO has asked that we not stay with them because they’ve deemed that we could be a target,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds and Brown, incidentally, had also planned to visit Iraq as part of this year’s trip to check on one of Playground Builders’ 61 projects completed so far and lay the groundwork for new ones. Thirteen of those existing playgrounds are in Iraq.

“We wanted to expand, with projects in northern Iraq,” Reynolds said. “But our visa was denied. We don’t know why. Perhaps it was out of concern for our safety.”

Playground Builders’ purpose is to promote peace through what its supporters insist is non-political action: namely, the building of playgrounds in war-torn regions. The hope is that both children and their parents will enjoy the simple pleasure of play and, perhaps, those from opposite sides of whatever political or religious divide may exist in their countries will meet and reach a greater level of understanding.

Another hope, Reynolds said, is that someday, “Those kids that are playing on those playgrounds today are going to have the opportunity to come and meet the kids who are playing on our playgrounds here.”

Over the past couple of years, Reynolds has seen examples of both the horrors of war and the power of the Playground Builders’ mission.

The organization deals directly with both NGOs and contractors on the ground. In Kabul, one of the two owners of a contracting company that was being solicited for its help on a playground was told where one of the group’s pilot projects was to be.

“He got so excited because that’s where his family lives and where his daughter was going to school,” Reynolds said. “Before we know it, he said, ‘They’ve invited you for a visit and a meal,’ and he put us on a taxi and we went right there.

“That was exciting. When you’re building a playground that your children are going to play at, it’s greeted enthusiastically.”

Some of the group’s most ground-breaking playgrounds have been in Gaza, the troubled Palestinian territory that in 2009 was invaded by Israeli Defence Forces in what’s known as Operation Cast Lead. Some 1,300 people died in the incursion, and a Playground Builders playground — facilitated by a Gaza-based German NGO — was badly damaged “by somebody who was driving a very heavy-treaded vehicle,” Reynolds said, showing off a photograph of the damage.

On the other hand, media reports from the time of the Israeli incursion “showed that children, after the shooting stopped, immediately ran to one of our playgrounds.”

Brown, the popular former Whistler Blackcomb and Panorama Mountain Village manager, is now a member of the five-member Playground Builders board of directors along with Whistlerites Mike Varrin and Kelly Hand and two Vancouverites.

“Kirby is a great hearts and minds kind of a guy who likes to see tangible projects completed,” Reynolds said.

Incidentally, the two — hardly the jet-setting CEOs of some major non-governmental organizations — are paying for their own expenses on the current journey.

Donations to support playground-building efforts have come from at least a dozen different countries, but Reynolds estimated that Whistlerites still contribute about 25 per cent of the total. Among the companies supporting Playground Builders are Nesters Market, the local Husky station and the Thornhill Real Estate Group. The Whistler Blackcomb Foundation and Squamish Rotary also are among the group’s benefactors.

It costs between $8,000 and $10,000 to build a playground in Afghanistan, a fraction of what it would cost here, Reynolds said. But the benefits are enormous, Reynolds said.

“The average school in (the Kabul area) has 14,000 students attending school in three, four-hour shifts, and it’s almost all girls,” Reynolds said, adding that girls and boys are placed in separate schools after Grade 3.

While much of the group’s effort to date has focused on girls’ schools, it also plans to add projects at boys’ schools to its priority list this time around, he said.

Unfortunately, in today’s Afghanistan, the largest employers are the Afghan national army, the Afghan national police force and the Taliban forces. The latter, Reynolds said, pays soldiers $10 a day. Those who work on Playground Builders’ projects are paid $7 a day — the going rate — but unlike those working as soldiers, those working on playgrounds are given lunch, “and they can go home every night,” he said.

“I think the Canadian military expenditures are roughly $7 million a day,” Reynolds said. “We built a playground for about $7,000, and I think we’re making a lot of friends with that playground, and we’re creating jobs where they’re desperately needed.”

For more information, or to make a donation, please visit www.playgroundbuilders.org