The Thrill of Climbing High, continued
I
t was a tough question for me. As a
child who grew up playing in parks,
loving to swing, excited by the thrill
of climbing high, I knew the power a
playground could have. But that didn‘t
change our reality. We were a homeless
shelter with barely enough money to
feed our residents. There were many
times in those early days when we didn‘t
know how we would make payroll. We
literally did not have enough money in
the bank to pay our energy bills, and I
was making calls to donors asking for
money just for the basics. A new playground seemed out of the question.
I wrote a letter of appeal to KaBoom!,
an organization that helps groups like
Our House find funding and make plans
to build playgrounds. My letter sounded
a lot like the story outlined here. I
explained our situation. I told them about
the 300 homeless children who come to
Our House every year–children who
have never had a backyard, children
who have lived in cars and in dark
apartments without heat or air. I wrote
about our community and the neighborhood just behind our property, where
little children ride their bikes up and
down the street while teenagers deal
drugs right in front of them, with no
adults in sight. I told them how we had
no money, but we were not going to
give our kids a hand-me-down playground because everything they had
was hand-me-down. Because our
kids–these sweet, homeless children–
get made fun of at school because of
all they don‘t have and, worst of all,
because the school bus drops them off
in front of a homeless shelter, exposing
their secret to all of their classmates.
For all those reasons, we needed a new
playground. We needed KaBoom!‘s
help, and we needed a sponsor who
would foot the bill to purchase the
equipment for us.
continued on page 16