WHAT:More than 300 volunteers from the Baltimore Ravens, the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council and Baltimore Housing, organizers from KaBOOM! and residents of the local community will join forces on Thursday, June 16 to build a new playground at German Park. The new playground's design is based on drawings created by children who participated in a Design Day event in April.
WHY:The new playground will provide more than 1,200 children in the local community with a safe place to play. Currently, the children living in the neighborhood do not have a usable playground within walking distance to enjoy.
The playground build is made possible through a grant from the Ravens All Community Team Foundation and through KaBOOM!, a national non-profit dedicated to saving play. The playground is the third built by KaBOOM! and the Ravens All Community Team Foundation and is one of more than 200 playground builds KaBOOM! will lead across the country in 2011 in an effort to provide a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.
WHEN: Thursday, June 168:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Kickoff 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:German Park
Whitelock St & Linden Ave
Baltimore, MD 21217
WHO:Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake;
Maryland District 40 State Senator Catherine Pugh;
Baltimore City Council President Jack Young;
Ravens cheerleaders & Poe, official mascot
VISUALS:Before and after shots of the site
Volunteers assembling brightly colored playground equipment
Volunteers moving 61,560 square feet of safety surfacing by hand
Ribbon-cutting ceremony to dedicate the playground
Ravens All Community Team Foundation
The Baltimore Ravens All Community Team Foundation is committed to improving, encouraging and enabling the healthy development of youth in the Baltimore area, as well as other parts of the state of Maryland. The foundation focuses on programs that help youth, and in some cases their families, with various needs, including housing, hunger, education, athletics and mentoring. Visit www.baltimoreravens.com/community for more information.
Reservoir Hill Improvement Council
RHIC unites, empowers, and mobilizes residents and organizations as a vehicle by which to define and take action on issues common to the Reservoir Hill Community.
Baltimore Housing
Baltimore Housing incorporates the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and Housing & Community Development within one organizational structure that unifies the neighborhood building and community support functions of the two agencies yet maintains the financial, legal and programmatic integrity of both. This new collaboration, known as Baltimore Housing, coordinates planning and development efforts, eliminates redundancy, and fosters program accountability.
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! 15 years ago 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 85,000 places to play, built almost 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.
