Mom's dream of 'playgrounds for all' catches on

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WEST HARTFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) -- A few years ago, Amy Jaffe Barzach was at a Connecticut playground with her children when she noticed a little girl in a wheelchair tearfully watching the other kids scamper about.

Barzach, 39, a West Hartford, Connecticut, mother of three, could not forget that visit a few months before her 9-month-old son, Jonathan, died of spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that would have confined him to a wheelchair had he lived.

In their grief, Barzach and her husband, Peter, searching for a constructive way to honor Jonathan's memory and help others, hit upon the idea of building an innovative playground where kids of all abilities -- even those in wheelchairs and leg braces -- could play together.

The result, after they raised $300,000 and mobilized 1,200 volunteers, was a fully accessible playground called Jonathan's Dream, which opened in October 1996 outside the West Hartford Jewish Community Center.

Now Jonathan's Dream is the blueprint for a growing number of playgrounds around the country. Through Boundless Playgrounds -- a nonprofit Barzach and friends founded in 1997 -- a group of professionals is marketing the concept of fully accessible or universal playgrounds to towns and cities around the country.

Though they look very similar to conventional playgrounds, universal playgrounds are usually larger and feature slightly different equipment. Some of the swings, for instance, may have high backs or arm rests to accommodate special-needs children.

"The very things we design for kids with special needs are often the most popular things with other (able-bodied) kids," Barzach said.

A universal playground is defined as one where children who use wheelchairs, walkers or canes or who have sensory or developmental disabilities can use at least 70 percent of the play equipment without leaving their support devices behind.

Boundless Playgrounds champions universal playgrounds and also "fully-integrated" ones, meaning that children of all abilities can play together throughout the playground, aided by ramps that connect the structures.

"It has become an overriding passion in my life," Barzach told Reuters in an interview. "The need for this is much greater and more compelling than I ever imagined."

Indeed, one in every 10 U.S. children, about 5 million in all, has some kind of disability, according to 1995 U.S. government data.

"The innovation of Boundless Playgrounds is that it facilitates children of all abilities to play together at their highest level of their ability," said Jean Schappet, the program's design director.

Schappet, a 20-year veteran of the playground industry, said play, far from being the trivial activity it may seem, is a crucial aid to physical, emotional, social and intellectual development. Universal playgrounds can be especially valuable because they also teach important lessons about accepting other people's developmental differences, she said.

"We pay an awful lot of lip service to children being our most priceless commodity, but in reality we spend a lot more money on (building) golf courses than on playgrounds," she said, adding that a golf course costs $5-10 million to develop.

So-called boundless playgrounds are typically 15-20 percent more expensive to build than traditional ones because the surfacing is cushioned with rubber and play structures are connected. The average cost is about $150,000.

By the end of this year, Bloomfield, Connecticut-based Boundless Playgrounds, which has eight full-time staff members and an annual budget of $600,000, will have helped build 17 playgrounds, with another 84 in the works.

Among the new ones is Shane's Inspiration in Los Angeles' Griffith Park. Set to open on September 21, it will be the largest and most expensive ($800,000) Boundless Playgrounds project thus far. And on September 9, its first playground outside the United States -- "Everykid's Park" in Orangeville, Ontario -- opened.

"We're starting to get calls from people literally all over the world who have read something or seen our Web site (http://www.boundlessplaygrounds.org), who say, 'This makes a lot of sense, teach me how to do that," Barzach said.

Boundless Playgrounds, which provides technical assistance and support services to groups that might consider sponsoring or initiating a universal playground, has had inquiries from 15 countries around the world including Australia, Cyprus, India, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, Russia and Switzerland.

Barzach's goal is to have a fully integrated, universal playground within easy reach of every child in the United States -- roughly 3,000 playgrounds someday. She concedes it is a big task for such a small group, whose biggest corporate donation so far has been $521,000 from the Hasbro Children's Foundation.

In June, Maryland became the first U.S. state to embrace the Boundless Playgrounds concept when it announced a $1.75-million initiative to build 10 playgrounds in the state.

"This is a great idea," said Mark Shriver, the Maryland state representative who spearheaded the effort. "Some ideas are so good and simple, they just get overlooked."

Shriver, 36, who happens to be the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a sister of the late President John F. Kennedy, said he has two able-bodied children and never thought much about playgrounds until fairly recently.

"A couple of years ago, a mother in my district came in and told me that her daughter with cerebral palsy could not play with her friends because of the actual construction of the playground," Shriver said. That got him thinking, and he eventually hooked up with Boundless Playgrounds and sold the concept to Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening.

Maryland's first universally accessible playground, Hadley's Playground, opened in Potomac, a Washington suburb, last year.

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Boundless Playgrounds, Inc. Home page 860.2438315
The National Program for Playground Safety
Grounds For Play - Creative Play Environments

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