Summer break is here, and kids in Wilmington have a new place to play at the Police Athletic League of Wilmington.
Elected officials, PAL and community members celebrated a 15-year dream come to life Friday afternoon.
A state of the art playground, designed by kids from the PAL, was built over the course of three days last week.
Bikki Rudd, project manager for KABOOM!, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending play-space inequity, says over 120 volunteers helped to bring the playground to life.
“When you see something that you had a voice in, especially as a child, you know that this is your space and you belong here," Rudd said. "And that’s what we want to create, and help folks create across the country.”
PAL Executive Director Chris Purnell adds it’s fun to play games in the gym and classrooms, but going outside and running around with friends is something else.
“As you can see here with this multi-course surface that were going to have, they’re going to be able to play basketball, hopscotch, four square, and then with the playground behind us, that’s self explanatory, and they’ll be able to get on there and do some good things,” Purnell said.
Purnell says kids at the PAL were asked to draw their dream playground, and after a few rounds of votes and revisions, it was ultimately the kids who chose what they wanted.
“We made a monumental standpoint with building our PAL playspace and core surface out here," he said. "We had a host of people helping out, different volunteers, we had Discover here, we had KABOOM! here, we had the community here.”
Discover Financial Services and KABOOM! were two partners in the project. To date, Discover has partnered with KABOOM! to build 39 playgrounds across the nation, This is the second in Delaware.
Purnell says the playground is not only safe, but free, just like all other PAL programming.
The playground consists of three different sections – a swingset, a main section with climbing walls and slides, and a second smaller section with a slide.
The PAL is located at 3707 N. Market Street in Wilmington.
