By the time the sun set on October 6, 2010, children in Washington D.C. had a great new place to play they designed themselves.

Hundreds of volunteers from Potomac Job Corps Center, Kraft Foods, Summit Health Institute Research and Education, and the local community assembled a new playground in less than eight hours for the children at the People’s Co-Op, the neighborhood in the Southwest of the District of Columbia. Volunteers gathered for a kickoff ceremony at 8:30 a.m. and completed the playground project in time for a ribbon cutting ceremony at 2:30 p.m.

Planning for the playground began at a Design Day event held August of this year, when local children and community leaders met to design children’s dream playground. The children’s drawings were then used to create the final playground design. The new playground at the People’s Co-Op will serve the 60 children who live at the complex and hundreds of children in the neighborhood every year. Until today, the children living in the area did not have a public playground within walking distance to enjoy.    

“It was amazing to witness the positive impact the construction of the playground brought to the community”, said Umar Kamara, facilities maintenance student of the Potomac Job Corps Center. “It was also incredible to see the immense amount of work accomplished in just a few hours, when people come together and collectively work toward one purpose”.