More than 250 volunteers from Amgen, the Cambridge Community Center, organizers from KaBOOM! and residents of the local community worked together on Saturday, June 19 to build a new, safe playground at the Cambridge Community Center on 5 Callendar Street. The new playground¹s design was based on drawings created by children who participated in a Design Day event in April.

The enthusiasm of the organizers and volunteers was infectious throughout the beautiful sunny day as people worked, listened to music, ate, and chatted. Volunteers of all ages kept arriving and signing up to help, far outpacing the organizers' original expectations of 200 volunteers. "The community interest and response and the business support have been incredible!" commented Sandra Young of the Amgen Foundation, one of the event sponsors.

"We're doing more than just building a playground here," said David Gibbs, Executive Director of the Cambridge Community Center "there's a whole lot of exciting activities going on."

The new playground provides the hundreds of children who frequent the Cambridge Community Center with a safe place to play. The playground is the third of seven being built by KaBOOM! and the Amgen Foundation across the U.S. and Puerto Rico this year, and one of more than 150 KaBOOM! will lead across the country in 2010 in an effort to provide a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.

One of the volunteers, who attends the Cambridge Community Center after-school program, came with his mom to help build the playground and summed it all up: "It's good to have a safe place to play - it's good to have fun!"

http://www.cambridgecommunitycenter.org/
http://wwwext.amgen.com/citizenship/foundation.html
http://kaboom.org/