What?  KaBoom!? You want to know what that is don’t ya?  Well, I guess I might just want to tell you!

I’m willing to bet that you have children, children that want to play.  There are not that many great playgrounds around anymore and not too many new ones being built.

School….well schools don’t even really even give your kids recess anymore.  It certainly isn’t like it was when I was a kid.

Physical activity? What the heck is that….’ol Johnny much rather play his video games and watch TV.  That is a sad, sad thing.  His mom don’t want him to go outside because its not safe…and besides that, the local playground is boring and decrepit.

My family spends a lot of time at the local parks.  We are lucky and have some really awesome ones around here.  I know that a lot of people are not so lucky and KaBoom! can help!

Playspaces are where kids learn to run, jump and swing. But they also learn how to negotiate and to respect one another. How to think and plan without an adult telling them what to do. Kids who play also play better as adults, since they build character as well as muscle on the playground.

KaBOOM! is a national non-profit dedicated to bringing play back into the lives of our children. KaBoom! facilitates building innovative, kid-inspired playspaces, using a community-build model which improves the well-being of the children they serve as well as the communities in which they live.

The KaBoom! Theory of Change

If you can picture it, you can believe it. If you can believe it, you can build it. The KaBOOM! Theory of Change is built upon the belief that the process of organizing a community-build playspace is as important as the product: the playspace itself. There are three pillars that support our Theory of Change:

• Collective Cause: Like teammates on a sport team striving to win a game, a diverse group of volunteers use their different skills to collaborate and achieve the straightforward and simple goal of building a playspace in one day for the universal cause of children’s well-being.

• Achievable Wins: Community development research has shown that an important step in community empowerment is to achieve a small, probable “win.” A community group that has successfully built a new playground or skatepark is more likely to believe they can individually and collectively make a difference. And they are more likely to act on future community needs.

• Cascading Steps of Courage: Small steps of courage lead to greater acts of courage. Researchers have explored what has caused people to take significant courageous actions to benefit others, and one of the leading factors for such acts was the presence of small, civically minded steps early on in life, which helped shape personal values and, over time, progressed to greater civically-minded acts.

By signing up with KaBoom! you can help make a difference.   You can submit playspaces that you know of so that others can find them as well.  You can search for playspaces that you may not know about too!  You can become a community partner and help build new playspaces by volunteering and fundraising. There is a task for everyone no matter how big or how small.

I hope you’ll come join KaBoom! with Mom Central and I!  I have already added some playgrounds on there. 

KaBoom! is also trying to get 100,000 Playspaces in 100 Days! We need your help to reach that goal!  If you choose a cause (mine is National Wildlife Federation) then Julianne Hough, two-time winner of Dancing with the Stars, and Mercury Nashville recording artist will donate $1 to your cause — and you’ll be entered to win great prizes, including a trip for four to meet Julianne!

Thank you goes out to Mom Central for letting me know about this great site so that I could share it with you all!  I’m telling you…again….those ladies ROCK!