It Starts with a Playground

And it also starts with you! Having a safe place for our children to play is so important and those spaces are harder and harder to find these days.



KaBOOM!, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding and creating play spaces within walking distance for every child, has started a nationwide campaign to help communities across America find and build those spaces. This campaign is so crucial for children who live in neighborhoods that lack playspaces, or are forced to use rundown or unsafe playgrounds.

KaBOOM! believes that play has a purpose and unstructured play in particular helps make children happier, fitter, smarter, more socially adept and creative. So how can you help make this a reality for kids everywhere?



KaBOOM!! needs YOU to help them map online 100,000 playspaces in 100 days. Here's what counts as a playspace: a playground, field, a skate park, roller hockey rink, lake, dog park, community center, basketball court or ice rink - any place where kids can engage in unstructured play for free or a nominal fee. A playspace listing on KaBOOM! consists of an address or cross street and a description, one photo and one rating.

KaBOOM! has made creating this playspace listing easy: either a quick fill-in on their website or even easier - a twitpic from your cellphone.

For every play space entered into the KaBOOM! database on behalf of the Mom Central team, $1 will be donated to Jumpstart, a non-profit that brings at-risk preschool children and caring adults together to improve literacy. So you're efforts will help in more ways than one!

In addition, having these playspaces marked with photos and ratings will be helpful to us parents if we are traveling to see relatives, vacation, etc. You can go online and find cool places to take your kids to play- near Grandma's, the hotel, or off the highway to break up a long drive. So really, everyone benefits from this wonderful campaign!