School, organizers from KaBOOM! and residents of the North Charlotte
community will join forces on Wednesday, Aug. 29 to build a new
playground at the school. The new playground's design is based on
drawings created by children who participated in a Design Day event in
July.
WHY: Today's kids spend less time playing outside
than any previous generation in part because only 1-in-5 children live
within walking distance of a park or playground. This play deficit is
having profound consequences for kids physically, socially and
cognitively. Children need a place to play every day in order to be
active and healthy, something KaBOOM! has been committed to since 1996.
The new playground will provide more
than 500 children in the North Charlotte community with a safe place
to play. Currently, the children who attend Sugar Creek Charter School
only have a small amount of out-dated equipment, which will be
replaced by the new playground.
The playground is the first built by
KaBOOM! and Shutterfly and is one of more than 150 playground builds
KaBOOM! will lead across the country in 2012 in an effort to fulfill
its vision of a great place to play within walking distance of every
child in America.
WHEN: Wednesday, August 29
8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Kick
off ceremony and volunteer deployment
11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Best
viewing of playground construction
1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Final
construction phase and adjustments
2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Ribbon-
cutting ceremony to dedicate new play area
(Note: all times approximate)
WHERE: Sugar Creek Charter School
4101 North Tryon St.
Charlotte, NC 28207
WHO: Hundreds of volunteers
VISUALS: Before and after shots of the site
Volunteers assembling brightly colored
playground equipment
Volunteers moving 43,740 square feet of
safety surfacing by hand
Ribbon-cutting ceremony to dedicate the playground
Sugar Creek Charter School
Sugar Creek Charter is a 12 year old, 850 student, K-8 school located
in a former K-Mart near Charlotte's center city. With a parallel
emphasis on academic excellence and character education and a 2012
Composite Achievement Score of 80.2%, Sugar Creek has become one of
the area's highest performing urban schools.
Shutterfly
Shutterfly's vision is to make the world a better place by helping
people share life's joy. This inspired Shutterfly to create the
Shutterfly Foundation, whose mission is to help organizations,
institutions and communities harness the power of sharing motivational
stories. The Shutterfly Foundation was launched in 2007 and is run by
a team of employee volunteers who are committed to supporting
education and family wellness in the communities where they live and
work.
KaBOOM!
KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to saving play. Children
today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, a
fact that is having disastrous consequences on their health,
achievement levels, and overall well-being. To fight this play
deficit, social entrepreneur Darell Hammond founded non-profit KaBOOM!
in 1996 in Washington, D.C. with a vision of creating a great place to
play within walking distance of every child in America. Since then,
KaBOOM! has mapped over 89,000 places to play, built more than 2,100
playgrounds, and successfully advocated for play policies in hundreds
of cities across the country. KaBOOM! also provides communities with
online tools to self-organize and take action to support play on both
a local and national level. Hammond chronicles the founding of the
organization and the importance of the cause of play in his The New
York Times Best Seller KaBOOM!: How One Man Built a Movement to Save
Play. The book details how businesses and communities can work
together to save play for children across the country. All author
proceeds support KaBOOM!. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., KaBOOM!
also has offices in Chicago and San Mateo, Calif. For more
information, visit www.kaboom.org.
