Firefighters Build Playground for Boys and Girls Club

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Robert Nowaczyk, a Los Angeles County firefighter and one of the owners of Fireman's Brew, was one of two firefighters to win the 2008 Dodge Ram Challenge. As part of his prize, Nowaczyk was given the opportunity to pick a place to build a children's playground in his name, courtesy of the Chrysler Foundation and KaBOOM!, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving all children in America a place to play.

Nowaczyk, a native of Grenada Hills, California, chose to build the playground in a vacant lot for the Boys and Girls Club of San Fernando Valley. He chose the site because it is in his hometown and because the club did not have any playground equipment for the more than 600 children that they serve each year. Of the site Nowaczyk says, "This lot has been here for 20 years, and it's just been vacant. In fact, when I was in high school I used to drive on this street right here on the way to my high school."

One of the special parts of this play space is that the kids who attend the Boys and Girls Club designed it. In January of 2009, on "Design Day" they were given the opportunity to create drawings of what they would like to have in the playground. Nowaczyk says, "They chose the colors. They chose which swing sets they would have, how many slides they would have. They were really excited about it and we just wanted to make a perfect day for them."

On the day that the playground was to be built, approximately 750 volunteers from the Chrysler Foundation, KaBOOM!, Fireman's Brew, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, and various members of the community came together to build the equipment in just 8 hours. These men and women poured 14,000 pounds of concrete and constructed 5,400 square feet of playground space. Among the colorful pieces of playground equipment that they built was the Spaceball, a modern version of the monkey bars, which is specially designed so that if a child falls from the top, the Spaceball will catch them.

This playground was the last in a series of 25 built by Chrysler and KaBOOM! in the United States. Through this program, the Chrysler Foundation, Chrysler Financial, KaBOOM!, and Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge dealerships nationwide gave 70,000 American children a new place to play. KaBOOM! facilitates the construction of playgrounds across the country, with a goal of building 200 in 2009.