Delta Air Lines, City of Auburn, Auburn Food Bank and KaBOOM! to build playground in just one day for children at Brannan Park

Today’s kids spend less time playing outside than any previous generation in part because only 1-in-5 children live within walking distance of a park or playground. This play deficit is having profound consequences for kids physically, socially and cognitively. Children need a place to play every day in order to be active and healthy, something KaBOOM! has been committed to since 1996.

The new playground will provide hundreds of children in the Auburn community with a safe place to play. Currently, the existing playground at Brannan Park is more than 30 years old and in need of replacement.

The playground is the first built by KaBOOM! and Delta Air Lines and  is one of more than 150 playground builds KaBOOM! will lead across the country in 2013 in an effort to fulfill its vision of a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.

City of Auburn
The City of Auburn Parks, Arts & Recreation Department provides opportunities for the public to participate in diverse recreational programs and activities designed to meet the needs of the community along with a host of special events suitable for the entire family. Auburn has 31 developed parks, 28 playgrounds, over 23 miles of trails and almost 247 acres of open space for passive and active recreation.

Auburn Food Bank
Started in 1930 as the Auburn Community Chest, The Auburn Food Bank is a volunteer directed organization that provides food, referrals, and emergency assistance to those in need. These services, which are provided year around by a coordinated and systematic approach to the collection and distribution of resources in a responsible and a caring way, will be extended to those living within the Auburn School District # 408 boundaries which includes the cities of Algona, Pacific, and the newly annexed areas of Lake Tapps and Kent. Our work today is the same that the citizens of Auburn set out to do in 1930, we are an agency that provides over $2.1 million in services, food and monetary assistance for energy bills to those in need. For more information or to donate, visit www.theauburnfoodbank.org

Delta Air Lines
Fortune magazine as the most admired airline worldwide in its 2013 World’s Most Admired Companies airline industry list, topping the list for the second time in three years. With an industry-leading global network, Delta and the Delta Connection carriers offer service to 317destinations in 57 countries on six continents. Headquartered in Atlanta, Delta employs nearly 80,000 employees worldwide and operates a mainline fleet of more than 700 aircraft. The airline is a founding member of the SkyTeam global alliance and participates in the industry’s leading trans-Atlantic joint venture with Air France-KLM and Alitalia. Including its worldwide alliance partners, Delta offers customers more than 15,000 daily flights, with hubs in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York-LaGuardia, New York-JFK, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Salt Lake City and Tokyo-Narita. Delta is investing more than $3 billion in airport facilities and global products, services and technology to enhance the customer experience in the air and on the ground. Additional information is available on delta.com, Twitter @Delta, Google.com/+Delta and Facebook.com/delta.

KaBOOM!
KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to giving kids the childhood they deserve by bringing play to those who need it most. Children today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, a fact that is having disastrous consequences on their health, achievement levels, and overall well-being. Social entrepreneur Darell Hammond founded non-profit KaBOOM! in 1996 in Washington, D.C. with a vision of creating a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America because children need to play actively every day at home, in school and in their communities. Since then, KaBOOM! has mapped over 90,000 places to play, built more than 2,300 playgrounds, and successfully advocated for play policies in hundreds of cities across the country. KaBOOM! also provides communities with online tools to self-organize and take action to support play on both a local and national level. Hammond chronicles the founding of the organization and the importance of the cause of play in his The New York Times Best Seller KaBOOM!: A Movement to Save Play, now out in paperback. The book details how businesses and communities can work together to save play for children across the country. All author proceeds support KaBOOM!. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., KaBOOM! also has an office in San Mateo, Calif. For more information, visit www.kaboom.org.

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