Volunteers work at play(ground)

Red-clad volunteers swarmed the playground of Benson West Elementary on Thursday as a new playground went up at the school at 6652 Maple St.

Between 350 and 400 volunteers, many from Mutual of Omaha, were on hand to roll sod, paint the playground asphalt, landscape and build a new playground area that Benson West students had designed.

The project was part of a Mutual of Omaha Foundation partnership with KaBOOM!, a Washington, D.C.-based national non-profit committed to building playgrounds. The new playground will serve more than 600 Benson West students and will be open to the community.

“We started Tuesday with a lot of the prep work,” said Benson West principal Terry Burton. “Today, people started arriving about 6 a.m., we had a kickoff ceremony at 8:30 a.m., and have just been going strong since then.”

The school’s playground equipment was more than 20 years old, Burton said, and there was no green space.

Also important, Burton said, was that Benson West students had designed the playground.

“We had a design day back in May, and ... our project manager asked our students one question. And that was: ‘If you could design your dream playground, what would it look like?’

“So the kids put pencil to paper, designed their dream playgrounds, and everything you see is a result of those drawings.”

Volunteers included Mutual employees, representatives from the Omaha Schools Foundation, KaBOOM! representatives and Benson West faculty and parents.

State Sen. Tom White was on hand, thanking volunteers for their efforts.

The Benson West playground will be the fourth of seven playgrounds – and the second in the Omaha area – built by the Mutual of Omaha Foundation and KaBOOM! this year. The partnership eventually will serve more than 52,000 children across the country. There will be more than 150 KaBOOM! playgrounds built this year.

“This is our home,” said Christine Johnson, president of the Mutual of Omaha Foundation. “We did ‘100 Days of Caring’ over the summer with a lot of volunteers, so we started in the beginning with that and now we’ve just capped it off.”

« Community

Share