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30 Green Days COMPLETE / Giving Back to the Next Generation of ValPLAYso

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Jayden’s school recently had a spirit week celebration to raise funds for ValPLAYso, one of our local parks. It’s a unique little park with a lot of medieval quirks. The kids have done fun things like wear hats in class, dress like adults, and crazy hair day which I temporarily dyed Jayden’s hair blue for. His friends thought it was cool and it was all for a great cause.

ValPLAYso was built back in 1994 and now it’s time for a revamp to make it safer, more accessible and more relevant for the community. The Next Generation is a combined effort of the Valpo Parks Foundation funded through public and private partnerships and receives no tax-payer funding.

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The Next Generation will be built with the help of Leathers & Associates and volunteers. The commercial value of playgrounds are two to three times what it costs to be built. Leathers & Associates makes building a playground affordable by assisting with budget, fundraising, and volunteer efforts to significantly lower costs. Leathers & Associates is an environmentally responsible company. They use recycled structural plastic and recycled composite plastic in their construction; both of which are earth-friendly, long-lasting and virtually maintenance free.

A few months ago, Jayden along with his schoolmates had the opportunity to give input and provide drawings based on what they wanted to see in the next phase of the park. Here’s the concept sketch of The Next Generation done by Leathers & Associates with the help of children from our community.  As Jayden says, “It’s going to be awesomesauce!”

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SC Johnson Gave Us $10,000 to Donate to ValPLAYso!

Thanks to SC Johnson, we’ve been given the opportunity to help ValPLAYso’s environmentally sound efforts! Having completed the #30GreenDays challenge, we’ve been given the opportunity to give back to our community by donating a very generous $10,000 to The Next Generation!

We’ve chosen to give the funds to the upcoming nature preserve clean-up project. The trees in the 1.16 acre mesic woodlot have become infected with emerald ash borer, which is a dangerous tree pest that can destroy forestry. The Valpo Parks horticulture team will be restoring the area, replacing the trees with various native tree and shrub species to keep the area vibrant.

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We are honored to have been selected to participate in 30 Green Days and for the opportunity to give back to ValPLAYso in such an impactful way. Hopefully, (if we haven’t moved) we’ll be able to contribute some labor when the building starts in October. We can’t wait to start enjoying and Instagramming our days at the new park! Thanks, SC Johnson, for such a fun challenge and for your donation to our community!

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Photo Credit: Valpo Parks

While SC Johnson is the sponsor of the 30 Green Days Challenge, all opinions and comments within this post are my own.

Shelly

Wednesday 14th of May 2014

AWESOME! I love this so much! I have been seeing greener initiatives in my community with new playgrounds, parks facilities etc...

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