Children play at the Sycamore & Oak playground. (Image courtesy of KABOOM!)
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Parks that serve communities of color are typically half the size of parks that serve mostly white communities and up to five times more crowded, according to a 2020 study. At the same time, parks in lower-income neighborhoods are four times smaller on average than those in higher-income neighborhoods. That’s playspace inequity, a problem that’s only exacerbated by climate inequity in a warming world. And it’s a problem that the nonprofit KABOOM! is trying to solve.
“A lack of access to quality places to play, paired with extreme heat, can keep kids from getting the active play they need to thrive,” explains Carrie Leovy, a senior strategist at KABOOM!, which is working to ensure that every kid has access to play. The organization has worked to build more than 3,400 community-based playspaces during its 28 years of operation. Doing so has led Leovy and the KABOOM! team to learn a lot about what works when it comes to creating equitable playspaces, including climate-resilient ones. It turns out that incorporating climate sustainability in playspace development is key to unlocking non-traditional funding sources to help get them built in the communities that need them most.
By focusing on green playspaces with features like rain gardens and equipment made with post-consumer recycled materials, the nonprofit gained access to more public and private funding opportunities. Green playspaces can be eligible for government funding sources like the Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program from the EPA and can be a win-win for corporate funders and foundations who are invested in both taking climate action and advancing philanthropic goals in their communities.
Just this past summer, KABOOM! and its partners, the Emerson Collective and Congress Heights Community Training and Development Corporation, opened a playground at Sycamore & Oak, a multi-use community and event space that’s currently home to a retail village in Southwest Washington D.C.’s Congress Heights neighborhood. Throughout the community engagement process, KABOOM! And Emerson Collective kept hearing how important sustainability was to residents.
Because of KABOOM!’s extensive and ongoing work creating sustainable playspaces, it has the connections to vendors and suppliers that landowners don’t otherwise have to bring ideas like the Sycamore & Oak playground to life. “When we were thinking about designs, we were thinking about the materials that were going to be used to build the playground. We thought about changes in climate that impact the neighborhood where it may be too hot to play on a plastic slide,” says Jasmin Malone, Emerson Collective’s director of strategy and research. “The idea is that we would try to move to either recyclable materials or more natural materials,” which they did by using wood and rope materials.
“We help project funders and landowners make the decisions they want to make around green playspace development because we’re in a unique position to help with the execution,” Leovy notes. “Our team trains and collaborates with designers, manufacturers and installers to create playspaces that are more effective at both boosting kids’ active play and protecting communities from the effects of climate change.”
(Image courtesy of KABOOM!)
The result at Sycamore & Oak has been a model playspace. “This is Emerson [Collective’s] first investment in a playspace in Washington D.C. Our hope is really not just to replicate it within our own portfolio,” Malone notes. “[We want] to actually serve as a model for other developers or investors who may be thinking about developing the neighborhood to not just think about playspaces, but to really think about the community engagement piece.”
It’s projects like this that helped KABOOM! secure a $1 million two-year grant from Clifbar’s ZBar brand earlier this year. “We’ve always been focused on the value of play for young people,” says Louisa Brown, senior manager of community impact for Clif Bar. “We started talking with KABOOM! about the work they were doing and learned how much they were actually doing in the sustainability space.” The outcome was a grant designed to help KABOOM! build its capacity to keep doing more to create playspaces that are both climate resilient and part of a climate solution. “Sometimes it’s referred to as catalytic funding,” Brown says.
“ZBar is helping KABOOM! build our capacity to help city and private landowners mitigate the impacts of climate change on their properties by creating green playspaces,” Leovy says.
Thanks to ZBar’s support, KABOOM! is leading research, creating new partnerships with playspace designers and builders, and is training internal staff to create playspaces that are regenerative — thanks to the use of reclaimed wood and native trees and plants — and sustainable with the use of sustainably grown wood and post-consumer recycled materials. The investment is also helping KABOOM! make playgrounds more resilient by removing asphalt, adding more trees, and ultimately protecting communities from the detrimental effects of climate change by creating playspaces that can withstand extreme heat.
Together, ZBar and KABOOM! are also educating parents and state and federal government officials about the value of outdoor play for kids. “KABOOM!’s experiences highlight that green playspace development efforts – particularly ones led through public-private partnership – create funder-friendly, multi-benefit solutions for improving health, learning, and resiliency for kids and underserved communities,” Brown adds.
KABOOM!’s collaborations with its partners demonstrate that creating equitable, climate-resilient playspaces isn’t just about building playgrounds — it’s about fostering healthier, vibrant, connected communities. By integrating sustainability into its mission, the organization is not only expanding access to play for kids who need it most but also addressing broader environmental and social challenges.
Projects like Sycamore & Oak showcase the power of public-private partnerships to create scalable, innovative solutions that inspire others to reimagine how playspaces can drive equity and resilience. With the support of partners like Clif Bar’s Zbar and countless local stakeholders, KABOOM! is proving that investing in green playspaces is an investment in the future — one where every child has the opportunity to play, grow and thrive in a changing world.