Layout 5-3 - Playworks

Jill C. Vialet
Founder and
Executive Director
Dear Friend of Sports4Kids,
When we started Sports4Kids just over ten years ago, we thought that sending someone
in to the local schools during lunchtime and recess was a good idea. We thought
we were coming up with a good way to help a few local schools increase opportunities
for kids to play. That was 1996. And now in 2006 we realize that it was much
more than just a good local idea. Our mission – to improve the health and wellbeing
of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful
play – places Sports4Kids at the fore of a significant educational movement.
Teachers, parents, pediatricians, and the rest of us who care about kids are calling for
an end to the disturbing decline in opportunities for play – both during and after the
school day. Policy makers and community leaders alike are recognizing the need for
safe and inclusive playgrounds.
Enter Sports4Kids…
Over the past ten years we grew from two schools to 81 in 2005-06; from a staff of one
half-time person to 107 full-time employees; from programs reaching a couple hundred
kids to over 32,000 kids daily. We expanded the training we’d developed for our own
staff, so we could help other adults (in schools, community organizations, and youth
programs) understand the critical importance of play for children’s development and
learn easy strategies for making play happen.
In addition to bringing play back to playgrounds in schools across the country, we
sent staff to Mumbai, India, and Cape Town, South Africa, to demonstrate the transformative
power of play. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we sent staff to Houston
to play with kids housed at the Astrodome – an effort to bring a little normalcy
and joy to a situation otherwise devoid of it. We also launched a new program in
Baltimore, and our plans for continued growth, including Boston and Washington,
D.C., are ambitious and far-reaching.
We learned a great deal these past ten years and had a lot of fun doing it. We have
grown and changed and struggled. This annual report looks not just at the past year,
but represents a decade of accomplishments. Our hope is that after you read it, you’ll
understand more about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going.
Looking back just makes me all the more convinced about the potential for
Sports4Kids’ future. I invite you to join us in pursuing the grandest of visions – to
make it possible for every child in this country to have the opportunity for safe,
meaningful play – every day.
Please read on,
Jill C. Vialet
Founder and Executive Director