STONE MOUNTAIN CHILDREN DESIGNED
DREAM PLAYGROUND:
Foresters, Mainstreet Community & KaBOOM!
Hosted Build Day for New Playground
WE DID IT!
WHAT: Mainstreet Community Services Association, ForestersTM and organizers from KaBOOM!, hosted a Build Day at the Mainstreet Community Pavilion on Saturday, May 5, 2012. Previously, children who live in Mainstreet and the surrounding communities put crayon to paper and drew their dream playgrounds, which ultimately became a reality. Elements from the children’s drawings were incorporated into the final design for the new community playground and built on May 5, 2012, at the Mainstreet Pavilion. Design Day, held in early March, was also the first meeting of the playground planning committee that worked along with KaBOOM! Project Manager, Danielle Trezek, Foresters liaison, Jessica Heddish, and Community Association Manager/Co-Project Manager, Nadine Rivers-Johnson, for the next eight weeks to plan and prepare for the construction of the new playground.
The new playground will provide more than 1,800 children and their families in the Stone Mountain community with a safe place to play. Playgrounds provide an opportunity for families to spend quality time together and get to know other families in their community. Currently, the children living in the housing community did not have adequate playground equipment to serve the area.
Since 2006, Foresters has invested over $7 million with KaBOOM! and built or planned almost 100 playgrounds across the U.S. and Canada. Over their 15-year lifespan, these playgrounds will provide more than 2.6 million children and their families with the opportunity to spend quality time together. Foresters is a KaBOOM! National Partner and a founding member of the KaBOOM! Leadership Circle – a group of organizations providing long-term guidance and support to KaBOOM! and its mission. The project is one of more than 150 playground builds KaBOOM! will lead in 2012 in an effort to provide a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.
About Mainstreet Community Services Association
Mainstreet…a caring community, was developed as one of DeKalb County’s first and largest planned “natural preservation” subdivisions in 1973. Located on 70 acres of land in Stone Mountain, GA., it is home to 1,164 residential properties. Mainstreet was developed with a “green” mindset and continues to maintain standards for natural preservation. Our commitment is to provide families with a sense of pride, safety in our own backyards, and outdoor activities that promote healthy family lifestyles.
About Foresters
Foresters™ is a life insurance provider with a difference. The fraternal benefit society, founded in 1874, supports family well-being through quality products, unique member benefits and inspiring community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with more than 835,000 members in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit foresters.com.
Foresters™ the trade name and a trademark of The Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, 789 Don Mills Road, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9; its subsidiaries are licensed to use this mark.
About 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 2,000 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.
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