KaBOOM! Manifesto on Play

Play is on the decline throughout America. Not enough playspaces are being built. Those that do exist are often in disrepair.

Many playgrounds fail to challenge both a child’s imagination and body. Recess is being removed from our nation’s schools. Parents keep their children at home, out of concern for their safety or run them from adult-supervised lesson to adult-coached game. More and more kids choose to stay indoors, lulled by television and video games.

On a purely human level the deficit of child’s play is sad, since it means a world with less laughter and joy. But it has graver implications for our society and our future. Many of our urgent problems, from the epidemic of childhood obesity to poor school performance, can be addressed through play. Playspaces are where kids learn to run, jump and swing. But they also learn how to negotiate and to respect one another. How to think and plan without an adult telling them what to do. Kids who play also play better as adults, since they build character as well as muscle on the playground.

KaBOOM! is a national non-profit dedicated to bringing play back into the lives of our children. We passionately believe that play has purpose. We are driven to create a movement in support of this belief. To create this mass action we do three things. We facilitate building innovative, kid-inspired playspaces, using a community-build model which improves the well-being of the children we serve as well as the communities in which they live. We create platforms and opportunities for the collaborative sharing and continual improvement of knowledge and tools needed for anyone to build playgrounds on their own. And we are advocates of the importance for each child to have a safe and engaging place, as well as the time, to play—knowing that this experience makes children happier, fitter, smarter, and more socially adept and creative in the here and now and in the future.