Tuesday, September 23, 2008

KaBOOM Chicka Boom

[Originally posted on Design . Build . Learn . Repeat]

If you haven’t heard of the fine folks at KaBOOM!, they travel the country building playgrounds for neighborhoods that need them. Their goal: a place to play within walking distance of every child in America. Friday and Saturday, I helped prepare and lead the construction of a shade structure as part of a KaBOOM! build at the Isiah Fredericks Community Center in North Gulfport. The shade structure was designed by Jessie Zenor and built by Hands On and the North Gulfport Community Land Trust; it incorporated hundreds of tiles decorated by children from across the Gulf Coast school system.

  • Total number of KaBOOM playgrounds as of Saturday: 1,500
  • Number of tiles decorated by kids in Gulf Coast schools: 620
  • Number of total volunteers: 400+
  • Number of Air Force volunteers: 225
  • KaBOOM playgrounds on the Gulf Coast since Katrina: 107
  • Time we finished prep work on Friday night: 11:30
  • New picnic tables: 4
  • Shade structures built: 1
Friday afternoon, I got a message from Caitlin at Hands On saying they needed help getting the structure ready for the KaBOOM! day. We ended up staying there until 11:30 at night, and good thing we did, because Saturday morning we had eager volunteers ready to begin gluing tiles to the structure.





Check out many more pictures on Hands On's Flickr Page!

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