Good Deed: Kaboom! 2010

This has been an especially busy week for Mudbug Media’s Community Craw11 initiative.  Last Saturday, a group of Mudbugs got down and dirty saving the wetlands along Lake Pontchartrain, and this Tuesday another group helped build a playground with 650 other volunteers for a massive Kaboom! playground construction project.

The build was sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, which is holding a citywide conference in New Orleans this week.  Eight Mudbug Media programmers, designers and coordinators braved driving rain and scary power tools to help construct a playground from scratch at Jefferson Playground.

Hard at Work

The day started out fun with an aerobics instructor warming everyone up for a day of hard work with some dance and aerobics moves.

We had so much fun!

After that warm up session, we split into groups and each group was assigned a different portion of the playground to build.  My group worked on a ladder first before moving on to building gardens.The playground was just an empty field with some trees scattered around before the Kaboom! folks moved in.  They poured a slab for the playground a couple days before we got out there and laid out the landscaping scheme, which we brought to life after a slight rain delay/bingo marathon.

The landscaping is just beautiful.  We turned this empty field into all these gardens with a path running through the middle and orange trees and rose bushes everywhere.

I had no idea we would be using big drills and shovels and wheelbarrows and all these tools when we got out there.  By the end of the day we were all experts in landscaping and playground building.

Good Cause

The AAOS doctors were very excited about the playground for a really sweet reason.  Lots of children get hurt at playgrounds every year, and Kaboom! specializes in building the safest playgrounds possible, so the doctors were very excited to help prevent injuries that might require their services.

The new playground also has workout stations for adults, helping promote exercise and a healthy lifestyle for all ages.  The entire community will be able to use this playground in some way, all thanks to the AAOS and all the hard work of all the volunteers.

The entire project turned out to be really fun for everyone involved.  I can’t wait to build another playground!