More than 200 volunteers from Bank of America, the Tampa Bay Rays, University Area Community Development Corporation and the community joined KaBOOM! Friday morning to give area kids the childhood they deserve by building a new playground at University Area Harvest Hope Park.
New @kaboom playground creates safe place for University Area kids w/ help from @UnivAreaCDC @RaysBaseball @BofA_News 🙂via @abcactionnews pic.twitter.com/F7VEbOydUH
— Lauren Rozyla-Wong (@LaurenRozyla) November 10, 2017
This new playground will bring more than 1,200 children in Tampa one step closer to having the play-filled childhood they deserve. In building this playspace together, we are making it easier for all kids to achieve balanced and active play. The design is based on children's drawings created at a special design event in August.
This comes after a child died playing in the road near what would become the Harvest Hope Park a few years ago. The child didn't have a safe place to play, according to UACDC. The new playground is built just steps from the accident site.
"This is more than just a playground in a park," said Sarah Combs, University Area CDC Executive Director & CEO. "It is a sign of commitment to focus on the health and wellness of our residents, and it says that they deserve to have what other communities have. Seeing these organizations come together and invest in a community that has so little is what real partnership is all about."
Now, the next step is to build a multipurpose sports facility in the next lot over, complete with a parking lot, sidewalks and new lighting, Combs said.
