Exciting news from the Goodman Community Center and Madison’s East Side Neighborhoods!  Thought we would pass this on in case it is of interest to you – 

The Goodman Community Center is partnering with the City of Madison Parks Department and KaBoom! to bring a greatly improved, community designed, playground to Wirth Court park next door to the Center.  Wirth Court has some of the oldest equipment in the city of Madison and we have a wonderful opportunity to upgrade the equipment to be one of the best community parks in the city.

Kaboom! (www.kaboom.org) works with corporate sponsors and community partners to build beautiful playgrounds in areas with no equipment, or old, deficient equipment. They use Play World Systems (www.playworldsytems.com)  Goodman CC has submitted the application and has worked with the parks dept, and we are in the final stages of selection.

If we are selected we will need our community to engage in the process.  In a variety of ways

1)      Design Day- we need 30-50 kids and 30-50 adults to come to a design day, led by Kaboom! staff.  At the design day the community gets to dream about what they would want in their new playground, not just the equipment, but the whole site- benches, mosaics, kiosks, tables, etc.

If we are selected, Design Day will be about a 2 hour evening process sometime in mid-August.

2)      Be on a committee.  We will need 15-30 parents or interested community members to volunteer to be on a steering committee that will communicate with neighbors, help raise funds- there is a small matching requirement, get food donations, recruit volunteers, organize the logistics of the build day itself.

3)      Build day itself will be in the week of October 3- exact days to be determined.  There are 2 days of preparations and then the entire playground is built in 1 day.  This means that the community has up to 100 volunteers who show up and join volunteers from our corporate sponsor and builds the new park together.

WE NEED YOUR HELP: If you are interested in being part of the Design Day, or on the Steering  Committee please contact Tanya Martinez Knauer attanyamk@goodmancenter.org or 241-1574 ext. 231.  PLEASE GET BCK TO HER ASAP.   Expressing your interest in being involved is not a commitment to be on a committee- yet.  You can choose later when you know more about it.