Foresters, KaBOOM! & Volunteers Encourage Quality Family Time by Building New Playground for Hamilton Children
Child-Designed Playground will Eventually Serve 13,500 Children and their Families
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HAMILTON, ON, June 11, 2011–Children in Hamilton received a brand new playground today thanks to the effort of more than 200 volunteers from ForestersTM, a life insurance provider committed to the well-being of families, St. Joseph Immigrant Women's Centre, CityHousing Hamilton and non-profit KaBOOM!. The new playground at Montcalm Community House will serve 13,500 children and their families in the Hamilton community for years to come. Planning for the playground began at a Design Day event held in April when local children and community leaders met with organizers from KaBOOM! and Foresters to design their dream playground. The children's drawings were used to create the final playground design.
"Foresters shares its financial strength with its members and communities where they live, such as Hamilton," said Tony Poole, President and CEO, Unity Life and President Foresters Canadian Division. "Playgrounds are an ideal place for families to get to know other families and build strong communities. This new playground at Montcalm Community House will provide opportunities for families to spend quality time together for years to come."
Since 2006, Foresters has invested over $7 million with KaBOOM! and built or planned almost 100 playgrounds across the US 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.
"This playground is an opportunity for the kids of Montcalm to engage in meaningful play in a safe environment, to re-learn the lost art of outdoor play," said Ines Rios, Executive Director of the Immigrant Women's Centre. "Kids love to play…they need to play, and this space will provide the opportunity for the growth, creativity, and skills that come out of it. The Immigrant Women's Centre is excited to work in collaboration with Foresters, KaBOOM! and the City of Hamilton, and the families of Montcalm to build this much needed space for Montcalm and the wider community."
The playground at Montcalm Community House will provide 13,500 children and their families in the Hamilton community with a great place to play and engage in healthy family time. In less than eight hours, the child-designed playground was built from scratch by hundreds of volunteers from Foresters, St. Joseph Immigrant Women's Centre, CityHousing Hamilton and the surrounding community. In addition, children and families spent the day playing games and participating in arts and crafts activities.
"CityHousing Hamilton is thrilled to be partnering with St. Joseph Immigrant Women's Centre, Foresters and KaBOOM! to build a new playground for the children in the Montcalm Community," said Brenda Osborne, CityHousing Hamilton Director. "This playground will help support Hamilton’s vision of being the best place to raise a child by offering Montcalm's children, families and neighbours a safe, clean place to meet, play, and learn. CityHousing Hamilton has had the pleasure of working with KaBOOM! on a playground project before and has seen what a strong sense of community organization and pride a project like this can create for the community. We are honoured to once again, be a part of this wonderful project that will contribute to the development of a healthy, happy, and strong community for our children and families at Montcalm."
Thanks to the work of Foresters, St. Joseph Immigrant Women's Centre, CityHousing Hamilton and KaBOOM!, children and their families now have a 2,400 square-foot playground to call home that includes features such as a Silo Climber, a Slide-N-Learn Panel and 360 Degree Spiral Slide.
About Immigrant Women's Centre
Founded in 1988, the Immigrant Women's Centre is an equality seeking, anti-racist, charitable organization dedicated to the social, political and economic inclusion of refugee and immigrant women in a just and supportive Canadian society. The Centre is committed to enabling refugee and immigrant women to discover and build their new futures through skills development and settlement support. The Montcalm community house has been in existence for two and a half years and is made possible through a donation from the Hamilton Community Foundation.
About CityHousing Hamilton
CityHousing Hamilton (CHH) is the not-for-profit Housing Corporation with 100% of the shares owned by the City Of Hamilton. Consisting of 7000 units, CHH is the 4th largest municipally controlled housing provider in Ontario. CHH provides affordable housing that is safe, well maintained, cost effective and supportive to the diverse needs of our many communities. CHH houses singles, couples, families, seniors and people with special needs in a variety of housing types including apartments, townhomes, semi-detached and single family dwellings. The vision of CHH is to constantly improve our standard of living through positively promoting a healthy and strong community, encourage growth through communication among tenants and the management and to protect and promote the interests of community members by working with government offices, the press and other tenant related organizations to encourage the greater community.
About Foresters
Founded in 1874 as a fraternal benefit society, Foresters
TM champions the well-being of families through quality life insurance, unique member benefits and inspiring community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with more than 835,000 members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Unity Life of Canada¹, a wholly owned subsidiary of Foresters, represents Foresters in Canada. For more information, please visit
www.foresters.com.
ForestersTM is a trademark of The Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9.
‡ Unity Life of Canada, a Foresters company, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Independent Order of Foresters
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! 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.
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Last Modified: Jun. 11, 2011.
407495 CAN/US (06/11)
