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Springfield’s Downtown Kiwanis Club announced today (Monday) that they’ve received a $7500 grant that has gotten them much closer to making a big difference in the lives of children in the Ozarks who have disabilities. KSMU’s Royal Yates spoke with the director of the organization to find out more about what they’ll do with the money.
When walking onto a playground, it can be easy to be taken back to a time when you were younger, things were simpler, and you didn’t have to worry about paying your taxes. However, for many children who have disabilities, a public park can be more of an obstacle course than a place to have fun.
According to the 2000 census, roughly 19.3% of people in the U.S. suffer from some form of disability. This means thousands of children in the Ozarks could be excluded from playing with certain structures on playgrounds.
Springfield’s Downtown Kiwanis Club hopes to change this by building a ‘universal design’ play center for children who live with disabilities. They have already raised more than $50,000 toward the purchase, and plan to raise $100,000 total.
This money would go toward a large, universal play structure in Jenny Lincoln Park on North Jefferson Street in Springfield that would be accessible for children of all shapes and sizes, regardless of their physical capabilities.
Pat Dierking is the president of the Downtown Kiwanis Club, and she says she’s glad to have the Springfield – Greene County Park Board supporting the organization’s efforts.
“The Kiwanis Clubs are all about helping kids, so we wanted to come up with a major project, and we realized that in city parks there currently exists no playground equipment for special needs kids. So we approached the park board and they decided that they would support us,” she says.
Springfield currently has only one other playground that is accessible by children with disabilities. It’s available to students at Delaware Elementary School. Dierking says this new location will allow everyone access to the freedom of playtime.
She says, “You know, that’s not in a public park, that’s on a school’s grounds. We just feel there’s a lot of kids here who need access to that, and not just for them, but for their families to play with them too.”
The $7,500 grant came from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Foundation.The club hopes to have the complete $100,000 to purchase the play structure and have it installed by this fall. For KSMU News, I’m Royal Yates.
