Decmeber 15th: KaBOOM!!!

So I think I found the job I want to do after Americorps; building playgrounds across the United States. We worked with a non profit organization called KaBOOM to help build a playground at an elementary school in down town New Orleans. KaBOOM is all about building “playplaces” (playgrounds, skate parks, ice rinks, and sports fields) so that every child in the US has a safe place to go and be a kid. So long story short we teamed up with other Americorps members, a group of college kids from Florida and other local volunteers to build a playground in one day. When I say playground I don’t mean a little swing set and some monkey bars. The playground we built had 6 slides, bridges, climbing walls, swings, a basketball game, monkey bars, and more. It only took 8 hours including a lunch break to build the entire playground. We were split up into smaller groups from 5 people to about 50. The biggest group was in charge off moving this huge mound of mulch and spreading it around the playground. My group put together the swing set, a couple stair cases and the fireman’s pole. We finished those within an hour and some change so I helped other groups and the main guys put everything together. I worked with Adam (the head guy from KaBOOM) and Harold (one of the guys from PA) so I got to do a lot of the fun stuff like drilling and putting all the slides onto the platforms. We also worked on the rock climbing wall which for one reason or another we could not get assembled. The wholes on the wall and the wholes in the support poles did not line up. With a little work and a lot of “manhandeling” we finally got it up. Other than the rock climbing wall everything else went very smoothly and we were able to cut the ribbon around 3 o’clock as planned. I was pretty amazed that we could assemble equipment, build the playground, haul the mulch (safety surfacing), mix and pour concrete and cut the ribbon all within one day but we got it done. Home Depot supplied a lot of the hard wear and tools and another nonprofit group, Partners in Play, from PA donated the actual playground equipment itself. Our group plans to do more KaBOOM playgrounds in January if we are still in the area. KaBOOM has promised to build 100 playgrounds in the gulf coast area. This was numbed 79!

For more information go to www.kaboom.org