Nationwide support campaign for large families “Bright Walls – Colourful Days” concludes

One of this year’s most colourful support campaigns, “Bright Walls – Colourful Days”, has concluded. As part of the campaign, five large Latvian families were given the opportunity to fulfil their dream of bright children’s rooms. During the campaign’s second stage, its organisers, with the support of the public, were able to bring joy to several more families, who received interior paints and the necessary tools to bring their ideas to life.

It is no secret that a significant proportion of large families in Latvia assess their standard of living as average or low. It is known that families’ largest expenses are food, housing bills, extracurricular education and activities, higher education and transport, while funds for home improvements and renovation are allocated very rarely or not at all. To support large families and help them fulfil their children’s dream of pleasant, colourful bedrooms, this spring the Latvian Association of Large Families, in cooperation with the paint manufacturer Vivacolor, organised a wide-ranging campaign through which several large families received renovated children’s rooms.

During the competition, families were invited to submit creative works in which children had to draw or creatively create a model of their dream room. Twenty-eight large families submitted their work, and five families from different regions of Latvia were selected as the winners. Families from Riga, Liepāja, Madona, Saulkrasti and Ogre Municipality gained the opportunity to start the new school year in bright, colourful children’s rooms. The most popular shades that the competition winners wanted to see in their children’s rooms were sunny yellows, sky blues and violets. The families also received paints with which they could create their planned wall murals—for one family, it was a bright little train; for another, a dream tree; and for yet another, drawings inspired by music.

“We are truly delighted to have the opportunity to bring joy and provide practical assistance to Latvia’s large and wonderful families! We worked hard during the summer and carried out renovation work in five children’s rooms, and both we and the families are pleased with the results. We are currently making plans for next year; we would like to continue what we have started and make this campaign a tradition so that we can help even more large families,” says one of the campaign’s initiators, Vivacolor representative Gatis Kulbergs.

"We really like the new room—it is so bright and sunny. Our daughter is the happiest of all; she cannot wait to spend the night there for the first time together with her little brother. We would like to thank the campaign organisers for this wonderful gift—now, when you enter this room, you want to smile, and it also inspires you to tackle the other tasks!” says a family from Ogre Municipality, describing the changes in the younger children’s room.

“Unfortunately, it was not possible to provide renovations for all the families that applied to the competition, so we decided to continue the campaign we had started by involving the public and collecting as much paint as possible with its help, thereby also assisting the remaining participating families,” says Gatis Kulbergs, speaking about the second stage of the “Bright Walls – Colourful Days” campaign.

In August, a large-scale paint collection drive was organised, with 14 paint drop-off points opened throughout Latvia. In September, the collected paint was compiled, sorted and put into sets so that during the month it could reach each family and help bring to life their plans for a more pleasant environment for children.

“We would like to express our gratitude to the municipalities and institutions that gladly supported and participated in the campaign by providing places and premises where people could bring paint. Many thanks also to Jēkabpils Municipality for its initiative in donating brand-new paint! It is no secret that renovation work is often one of the last expenses that large families can afford. For precisely this reason, we wanted to draw the public’s attention to the issue and, through joint efforts, make the environment surrounding children more welcoming. Another small step has been taken towards a brighter childhood and a more cohesive society,” comments Leonīds Mucenieks, head of the Latvian Association of Large Families, on the campaign.

The campaign is planned to continue in the coming years, and with each successive year its organisers hope to find even more opportunities to help large families create bright, colourful children’s rooms.