Playground to enhance children's well-being
WINDER, GA, June 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ - A dream is now a reality for campers at Camp Twin Lakes with serious illnesses and other physical and emotional challenges as their drawings were turned into a new playground today. In less than eight hours, the play space was built with the help of more than 200 volunteers from ForestersTM, Camp Twin Lakes and non-profit KaBOOM!. The new playground will serve 60,000 children and their families in the community for years to come, providing them with a fun and accessible place to play.
"Foresters believes in providing opportunities for families to spend quality time together," said Kasia Czarski, Foresters Senior Vice President, Chief Membership and Marketing Officer. "A playground is important to the enrichment of a community. For Camp Twin Lakes, whose campers have various abilities and challenges, this playground provides not only a safe, healthy place for play, but enables their campers to experience the simple joys of childhood."
Planning for the playground began at a Design Day event held in February when local children and community leaders met with organizers from KaBOOM! and Foresters to design their dream playground. The children's drawings were then used to create the final playground design.
Since 2006, Foresters has invested over $7 million with KaBOOM! with almost 100 playgrounds built or planned across the U.S. and Canada. Over their 15 year lifespan, these playgrounds will provide more than 2.6 million children and their families with an opportunity to spend quality time together. Foresters is a KaBOOM! National Partner and a founding member of the KaBOOM! Leadership Circle - a group of organizations providing long-term guidance and support to KaBOOM! and its mission.
"Camp Twin Lakes believes in the power of play and understands the need for imaginative explorations," said Eric M. Robbins, Executive Director of Camp Twin Lakes. "Our camp atmosphere is transformative in the lives of our campers, providing them a break from the rigors of various treatments and the feeling of being 'different.' We are passionate about empowering our campers and restoring a sense of childhood by nurturing carefree joy as well as emotional and physical growth. This playground will aid us in continuing to do this, and we are ecstatic to partner with KaBOOM! and Foresters to make it happen."
Thanks to the work of Foresters, Camp Twin Lakes and KaBOOM!, children and their families now have a 2,500 square-foot playground to call home that includes features for children of all ages and abilities such as a Cozy Cocoon, U-Bounce and Vortex.
A passionate advocate for family well-being, Foresters recently launched the Tech Timeout™ challenge, which encourages families to take a pledge to turn off all electronic devices for an hour a day for one week. For more details, visit techtimeout.com.
About Camp Twin Lakes
For the past 20 years, Camp Twin Lakes has provided life-changing camp
experiences to more than 50,000 of Georgia's children with serious
illnesses, disabilities, and other life challenges. Camp Twin Lakesprovides week-long summer camps and year-round weekend retreats at
three fully-accessible and medically-supportive campsites, daycamps,
and through hospital-based Camp-To-Go programs. Camp Twin Lakescollaborates with more than 60 different nonprofit organizations, each
serving a different population, to create customized programs that
teach campers to overcome obstacles and grow in their confidence and
capabilities. Annually, Camp Twin Lakes serves more than 9,100 campers,
leverages support from 3,500 volunteers, and subsidizes 80% of the
direct camp costs ($800) for every camper served. For more information,
please visit www.camptwinlakes.org.
About Foresters
Foresters™ is a life insurance provider with a difference. The
fraternal benefit society, founded in 1874, supports family well-being
through quality products, unique member benefits and inspiring
community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with over
one million members in Canada, the United States and the United
Kingdom. For more information, visit foresters.com.
Foresters™ is the trade name and a trademark of The Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, 789 Don Mills Road, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9; its subsidiaries are licensed to use this mark.
Tech Timeout and the Tech Timeout logo are trademarks of The Independent Order of Foresters
About KaBOOM!
KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to giving kids the
childhood they deserve by bringing play to those who need it most.
Children today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous
generation, a fact that is having disastrous consequences on their
health, achievement levels, and overall well-being. Social entrepreneur
Darell Hammond founded non-profit KaBOOM! in 1996 in Washington, D.C.with a vision of creating a great place to play within walking distance
of every child in America because children need to play actively every
day at home, in school and in their communities. Since then, KaBOOM!
has mapped over 90,000 places to play, built more than 2,200
playgrounds, and successfully advocated for play policies in hundreds
of cities across the country. KaBOOM! also provides communities with
online tools to self-organize and take action to support play on both a
local and national level. Hammond chronicles the founding of the
organization and the importance of the cause of play in his The New York Times Best Seller KaBOOM!: A Movement to Save Play, now out in paperback. The book details how businesses and communities
can work together to save play for children across the country. All
author proceeds support KaBOOM!. Headquartered in Washington, D.C.,
KaBOOM! also has an office in San Mateo, Calif. For more information,
visit www.kaboom.org.
SOURCE Foresters
