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!