KaBOOM! and America’s Promise Alliance Award New Playground to St. Petersburg
Announcement made at National Forum on Youth in Washington, DC

WASHINGTON, DC—KaBOOM!, a national non-profit dedicated to bringing play back into the lives of children and America’s Promise Alliance today announced that the city of St. Petersburg, FL has been selected to receive a brand new community-built playground. This project is made possible by KOOL-AID as part of its partnership with KaBOOM! to build playgrounds across the country. The formal announcement of the city’s selection will take place this evening at the 100 Best Communities for Young People celebration in Washington, DC. The award will be accepted by Mayor Rick Baker.

St. Petersburg was selected as the winning community for its outstanding work to ensure that all children and youth in its community have a safe place to play. The city’s innovative “Play 'N' Close to Home” program utilizes public-private partnerships to build public playgrounds within a safe walking distance (1/2 mile) of every child in the city. Since 2004, the program has increased the total access to playspaces by 20 percent in residential areas across the city, in partnership with schools and houses of worship.

Sit on a bench

You can help make your park safer simply by sitting on a bench. But you’ll need the help of a couple of friends, too.

Organize a playground or park watch. Sit on a bench at your local park with a friend to make sure the kids are safe and people aren’t committing vandalism. Make sure you have a cell phone to report any suspicious activity. Make a habit of it and people will start to see the park as a safe place to bring their kids.

Learn how.

See more actions.

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By Karen Blackledge
The Daily Item
Sept. 2, 2008

DANVILLE — With a list of 14 safety items needing to be addressed and the risk of insurance coverage being lost, the Kidsville playground complex was closed Tuesday.
 
Orange and red “no trespassing” signs have been posted along the dark brown wooden fence of the castle-style wooden structure at the Washies Playground in Danville’s 2nd Ward.

The main entrance was barricaded by an orange plastic fence with a more permanent and locked barricade to be installed.

The items that need to be corrected before the insurance company will sign off lack volunteers to do them. [More]

Have you found a great way to recruit volunteers for maintenance tasks? Post your thoughts in the Forums.

Check out a cool playground build slideshow from forestgrove, who had this to say about her Build Day:

We are so excited, our build day on September the 6th went fantastic! We had 20 volunteers which was just perfect. It was supposed to rain that day but it held off til about an hour after we had finished. We are having our surface poured tomorrow and the kids will be able to play on it on Friday. Just in time for our school's Open House next Monday. It truly was a community effort, our township maintenance crew came out with there jackhammer, bobcat and auger, and bulldozer to help us dig our holes.

By Jared Liu

From my earlier article, you know that there are critical benefits for incorporating trees at playspaces. Now let’s talk about technical details of planting and caring for trees. Unfortunately, it may not be as easy as it sounds. You need to know about managing inventory and quality control, tree selection, site preparation and planting, and proper tree care including watering, mulching, pruning, and fertilizing. Otherwise, you could quickly end up with a row of dead trees.

The best option is to contact your community tree organization. Ask them to help in early in the playspace planning stages. You can find the one nearest to you by visiting the Alliance for Community Trees at www.actrees.org/aboutus.

Trees are an investment: take good care of them and you’ll reap the benefits. Here are some critical rules for how you can invest in the safety and health of our communities...

3 Virginia cities cited for encouraging play

Canton recognized for parks services

Gilbert earns 'Playful' praise

DeRidder named 'Playful City USA'

I've been back in D.C. since last week, working out with my Wizards' teammates and preparing for our upcoming training camp. It's still hard to believe that we're in the middle of September and the NBA season is here again. Before I get back and sweaty on the basketball court, I'll be getting my hands dirty this weekend in D.C. by building my final playground of the summer!

I've already heard that the playground I helped build in Shreveport/Bossier City, La. has gotten a ton of action from the kids in the neighborhood there! I only wish I could have been there to see the first kids playing on the site. Hopefully I'll have the chance to get back there next summer to see them!

I'll be promoting this week's D.C. build through various channels, such as radio and television interviews Wednesday and Friday morning. I have numerous interviews scheduled, but am looking forward to them because it's easy to talk about something I'm so passionate about. I'm used to doing lots of interviews after my Wizards' games throughout the season, but they're usually more serious since they involve my "job." These interviews will all be about "play"!

I'm expecting a great build on Saturday with nice weather and lots of volunteers. We're building the playground in a community called Park Southern in D.C. Park Southern is committed to providing a better life for the kids and families who live there. I'm just appreciative for the opportunity to partner with KaBOOM! and KOOl-AID to help further their efforts by providing this new safe and fun place for their kids to play.

Park Southern, here we come!

-Antawn

Learn more about Antawn Jamison, All-Star Playmaker!

View photos from his build in Bossier City, La.!

At the end of the day Sept. 20, after building brand-new playgrounds in Chicago, Gulfport, Miami, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., KaBOOM! will have built over 1,500 playspaces across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.

The 1,500 playgrounds KaBOOM! has built, along with our generous funding partners and amazing community partners, serve more than 750,000 children each year!

We can’t wait to build 1,500 more!

Playworkers at Imagination Playground in a BOX opening, July 9, 2008 Learn more about Imagination Playground

By Penny Wilson and Joan Almon

When adventure playgrounds began in London after World War II they were staffed by “wardens.” They kept the keys for the tool sheds, which held the building materials and bits and pieces that the children needed for their playing. This role rapidly developed as the wardens discovered the wonder of play and became advocates for children's play. They gathered materials and local support and facilitated the play processes of the children. Gradually the wardens became “play leaders” and then “playworkers,” because they understood that they must not be leading the play of children — rather they should be working with play.

The term playwork is a deliberate oxymoron. It is a craft filled with paradoxes, for in an ideal world playworkers would not need to exist. Across Europe and in Japan playworkers manage the spaces for children’s play, but their work needs to be as invisible and unobtrusive as possible...

By John Kelly
Washington Post
Sept. 15, 2008

To the kids who played baseball on the Macomb Street playground back in the 1960s, the drop at the edge of far left field might as well have been the Grand Canyon. If the horsehide skittered past your glove and rolled down that ball-swallowing trench, it was a sure homerun for the other team.

But on Saturday afternoon, at a 40th (roughly) reunion of playground regulars, former child after former child came to the same conclusion. "It doesn't look so big now," said 52-year-old Wai Hom, who'd traveled all the way from Nashua, N.H., to reconnect with old friends.

For Wai and the dozens of other Macomb veterans, the Northwest D.C. playground was a skinned-knee utopia. It seems almost unimaginable today, when we won't let children out of our sight and every extracurricular activity is programmed down to the millisecond, but once upon a time, kids were kids. [More]

Make sure your kids have good playground memories - consider building or refurbishing a local playspace today.