In partnership with Advent Software, Coverity and Salesfore.com, Playworks is painting the recess playground at all our partner schools this year.
Side by side with our corporate volunteers, we are changing the landscape of our schools and brightening our neighborhoods.
With lines and colors on the playground more kids play and kids play a larger variety of games.
Check out our own Coach Alex's experience as his recess playground got a make over…
Sometimes, a new look can go a long way. I recently had the good fortune of working with a group of corporate volunteers to paint fresh lines and colors on my playground. It was – to say the least – a hot day (especially by San Francisco standards). Yet in a just over two hours, we laid down crisp white lines around the kickball field and volleyball and basketball courts, and hit the four-square courts and basketball keys with ultra-bright splashes of yellow, green, red and blue. It was a very cool transformation to witness.
But the change was much more than a cosmetic one. When the painting was finished, the fruits of our labor were descended upon by a group of fourth and fifth graders from the after-school program, (many of whom had been watching the whole process with great interest from the third floor windows.
For the volunteers and coordinators, this was to be our moment of truth – and we did not disappoint.
The faces of those children when they stepped onto their new playground were nothing short of inspiring, their smiles contagious as they raced from one area to the next, talking amongst each other about the games they couldn’t wait to play. “My eyes just lit up,” remarked one fifth grader. “The bright colors make me feel so happy!”
The day closed with all of us – volunteers, coordinators, and kids – coming together to share a few words about the experience. For many of the volunteers, the afternoon had given them a chance to not just get out of the office, but to revisit their childhood, reminisce on the games they themselves played as elementary schoolers, and, perhaps most importantly, to realize the immediate effect they were going to have on the lives of so many young people.
-Alex Brasfield (Playworks Coach at Sherman Elementary)
