KABOOM!

What does it take to transform a community to promote literacy? Philadelphia’s #LiteracyRichEnvironments partners share their experience and lay out 5 conditions for reshaping cities to promote reading, including opportunities to co-create with families and to embrace a broad set of outcomes. Get inspiration from a new The Learning Agenda brief: https://lnkd.in/gF7JedNV

Civic infrastructure is the connective tissue of our communities. What role do government leaders play in shaping our civic life? Join the #Percent4Place coalition TODAY at 2:00 PM EST to hear from government leaders and experts on the policies and programs that connect us. Register here: https://shorturl.at/xx3BT

Creating a sense of belonging in public spaces means integrating community and cultural identity into our playground designs. The Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) themed playground in Brownsville, TX is an example of how KABOOM! works with the community to tie in cultural elements, increasing pride in and attachment to public spaces. #HispanicHeritageMonth

Since 2022, KABOOM! & The Powell Foundation have been creating playspaces that spark joy while teaching kids about the environment. Together, we’ve ensured every public elementary school in the city has had a new playground built or replaced, in Huntsville, TX, inspiring the next generation to care for our planet. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eUJedaSC

KABOOM!, with our partner the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, is thrilled to celebrate the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) as our newest partner in the 25 in 5 Initiative to End Playspace Inequity. Together, we are working to address an urgent need in Oakland – kids are not getting the play they need to thrive. In Oakland, only 19% of boys and 9% of girls receive at least 60 minutes of daily physical activity. One of the barriers is inequitable access to quality playspaces, which is a reality across the country, especially in Black and brown communities. As you can see from the video of one of our earlier playspace transformations at Franklin Elementary School in Oakland, we have been working with OUSD to renovate 15 next generation schoolyards in Oakland since 2021. Through the 25 in 5 Initiative, KABOOM! and OUSD will deepen our work together to create even more new playgrounds, sport courts, teaching gardens, outdoor classrooms, and murals with 25 more schools, providing more than 10,000 students per year with quality active play opportunities at daily recess and before and after school. Learn more about 25 in 5: https://lnkd.in/eWgKiVq2

With Smile Generation, we have engaged nearly 4,000 volunteers and worked across 17 cities, bringing amazing places for 27,000 kids to play, learn, and experience all of the benefits of having joyful places to play. Read more about our recent 20th playspace build together: https://bit.ly/4gX3E9p

We could not do the important work to achieve our mission for kids and communities without our amazing partners. We are so incredibly proud of our long-standing partnership with Discover Financial Services that has allowed us to come together for nearly 30 years, recently completing our 50th playground project together! Over the years, nearly 30,000 Discover volunteers have donated more than 75,000 hours to building playspaces. Thank you to all of our friends at Discover for inspiring generations of happy and healthy kids. Read more about the work we've done together: https://bit.ly/47UdFQM

We recently celebrated our 15th next generation schoolyard revitalization project with Oakland Unified School District and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation at REACH Academy, with 10 more to go before the end of the 2025-2026 school year. The new schoolyard is filled with nature play elements, a library, a basketball court, and a beautiful playground for kids to expand the learning opportunities from inside the classroom to outside and allow them to experience the benefits of access to the outdoors. We were grateful to have a community of leaders including Stephen and Ayesha Curry who are committed to addressing issues across the system and providing solutions that kids will enjoy in their learning environments. Looking forward to so much more to come!

Last weekend KABOOM! and Harlem Globetrotters teamed up on a community play-filled event in celebration of our commitment to the CDC Foundation’s National Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities. Together with Congresswoman Nikema Williams, KABOOM! CEO Lysa Ratliff, USDA Deputy Undersecretary Meryl Harrell, National Park Trust Executive Director Grace Lee, CEO of YMCA of Metropolitan Atlanta Lauren Koontz, and Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Karen Hacker, we highlighted the important connection between nutrition and play in creating strong, healthy, and happy kids and communities. The joy of kids was on full display as they learned some new skills from the Globetrotters and then played on the playground we built with the YMCA’s Youth and Teen Development Center and General Motors last year.

We joined American Forests at #ClimateWeekNYC week along with dozens of global partners in the 1T commitment to conserve, restore, and grow a trillion trees by 2030 with a promise of our own – KABOOM! will do our part to protect our planet and plant at least 5,000 trees on our playgrounds across the country. This commitment to 1T will not only help put thousands of new trees in the ground but also help lower neighborhood temperatures because we'll be planting them in urban heat islands within the cities and school districts we work.