Friday, February 3, 2012

Media Alert: VERINT AND KaBOOM! TO BUILD PLAYGROUND IN JUST ONE DAY AT LANGSTON HUGHES ACADEMY IN NEW ORLEANS


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                
CONTACT:    Rebekah Cain, FirstLine Schools, 504-952-1331, rcain@firstlineschools.org
                        Anne Patton, Verint Systems, 770-754-8656, anne.patton@verint.com
                        Mike Vietti, KaBOOM!, 785-320-2137, mvietti@kaboom.org
                                                         

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.

# # #

No comments:

Post a Comment