FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DESIGNED BY KIDS, BUILT BY VOLUNTEERS:
VERINT
AND KaBOOM! TO BUILD PLAYGROUND IN JUST ONE DAY AT LANGSTON HUGHES ACADEMY IN
NEW ORLEANS
WHAT: More than 200 volunteers from Verint®
Systems, ACCENT on Arrangements, Inc., FirstLine Schools and Langston Hughes
Academy Charter School, organizers from KaBOOM! and residents of the local community
will join forces on Monday, Feb. 6 to build a new playground at the school. The
new playground’s design is based on drawings created by children who participated
in a Design Day event in January.
WHY: 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 more than 400 children in the community with a safe place to play.
Currently, the children who attend Langston Hughes Academy Charter School do
not have a playground for students to enjoy.
The playground will
be the first built by KaBOOM! and Verint and is one of more than 150 playground
builds KaBOOM! will lead across the country in 2012 in an effort to fulfill its
vision of a great place to play within walking distance of every child in
America.
WHEN: Monday, February 6
8:30
a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Kick-off ceremony
and volunteer deployment
11:00
a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Best viewing of
playground construction
1:00
p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Final
construction phase and adjustments
2:30
p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Ribbon-cutting
ceremony/check presentation to dedicate new play area
(Note: all times approximate)
WHERE: Langston Hughes Academy
Charter School
3519 Trafalgar St.
New Orleans, LA 70119
WHO: New Orleans City Councilmember Susan Guidry;
Hundreds of volunteers
from the community
VISUALS: Before and after shots
of the site
Volunteers
assembling brightly colored playground equipment
Volunteers
moving 45,360 square feet of safety surfacing by hand
Ribbon-cutting
ceremony to dedicate the playground
Langston
Hughes Academy
The
mission of Langston Hughes Academy Charter School is to provide students with
the knowledge, skills and character traits necessary to succeed in high school,
college and the world beyond. Our goal is to send every student to college by
preparing them for the best public and private high schools in the New Orleans
area. Learn more at http://www.langstonhughesacademy.org.
FirstLine Schools
The
mission of FirstLine Schools is to create and inspire great public schools in
New Orleans. FirstLine currently operates Samuel J. Green Charter School,
Arthur Ashe Charter School, John Dibert Community School, Langston Hughes
Academy, and Joseph S. Clark Preparatory High School.
Verint
Systems Inc.
Verint®
(NASDAQ: VRNT) is the global leader in Actionable Intelligence®
solutions and value-added services. Its extensive portfolio of Enterprise
Intelligence Solutions™ and
Security Intelligence Solutions™
helps worldwide organizations capture and analyze complex, underused
information sources—such as voice, video and unstructured text—to enable more
timely, effective decisions. More than 10,000 organizations in 150 countries,
including over 85 percent of the Fortune 100, use Verint solutions to improve
enterprise performance and make the world a safer place. Headquartered in N.Y.
and a member of the Russell 3000 Index, Verint has offices worldwide and an
extensive global partner network. Learn more at www.verint.com.
ACCENT on
Arrangements, Inc., a DMC Network Company
Founded in 1991 by
Diane B. Lyons, ACCENT on Arrangements, Inc. is a privately held corporation with
the primary interest of planning, managing and supervising group activities to
include spouse/guest programs, team building activities, special events,
entertainment and décor, transportation services, speaker programs, hospitality
staff and VIP services as well as children’s programs and events. Headquartered
in New Orleans, ACCENT has a management team with more than 90 years of
combined destination management experience. It is a proud member of the DMC
Network, an LLC of the top performing, wholly owned DMCs through North America.
KaBOOM!
KaBOOM!
is the national non-profit dedicated to saving play. 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. To fight this play deficit, 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. Since then, KaBOOM! has mapped over 89,000 places to play, built more
than 2,000 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!: How One Man
Built a Movement to Save Play. 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 offices in Chicago and San Mateo, Calif. For more information, visit www.kaboom.org.
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