Growing up, before you slid down a slide, did you think twice about why the child with a pacemaker couldn’t slide with you? As a kid, did you wonder why your neighbor in her wheelchair couldn’t join you on the carousel? Today, is this something that crosses your mind as an adult?
Chances are, probably not. But the reality is that 5 percent of children (ages 5–17) in the US have a disability. Six million American kids have a disability that prohibits them from playing on a playground.
“There are some of us who believe that this is the last civil rights act that we can do to get people with disabilities included, accepted,” Let All The Children Play (LATCP) executive director David Weingarten (pictured above, second from left) said. “So that when I go to a Mets game with [my son] and I’m there with other people, and other people are introducing their grandchildren or their own sons who are 12, 18, or whatever, they’re not going to be afraid of my son or his disability.”
Wednesday night, the nonprofit had a fundraiser at Manhattan’s Double Crown restaurant for its programs. Weingarten has represented LATCP for five years, but for 25 years, he’s watched his son with Down syndrome grow up in a sometimes closed-off world.
“I’ve always stayed a step ahead in his life to be able to help in the planning of his cycle. Through my advocacy work and having him included in the regular school system and being a part of our family and participating in our beach club, participating in going out to meals with us, that he is accepted wherever we go,” Weingarten said. “We are almost using him to educate others that people with disabilities are people first. Their disability comes second.”
That’s why LATCP teamed up with former New York Giant Tiki Barber‘s (above, middle) organization Tiki Recreation and European-based playground design company KOMPAN in late 2009 to build an all-inclusive playground in Nassau County, N.Y. Through government bonds and grants, they raised $1.3 million for Eisenhower Park (rendering above and map below with Howie Schwartz, President of Grandstand Sports), which will open spring 2011.
“The perfect example is the carousel,” LATCP founder Michael Alon (above, far right) told Tonic. “It’s not like a carnival carousel. They don’t include horses but seats. The seats are side by side. They have straps to hold children in who can no longer hold themselves…. If you had a pacemaker — which would be really sad if you were a child — you couldn’t go down the slide with your brother. That’s why our slides are static-free slides.”
Tiki Recreation has been building innovative playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods like Newark, N.J. for several years and even constructed the Hudson Valley Cerebral Palsy Center. Today, they’re a driving force behind the upcoming Eisenhower Park, while KOMPAN will supply the materials and the design for each structure.
“The beauty of our business is simple,” Barber said. “We want to give every kid the opportunity to have a fulfilling and enriching experience on a playground and want to always come back and learn. There are so many things that happen [on a playground]. You figure out how to fail and succeed. You figure out how to resolve conflicts, interpersonal skills, how to play with other kids. All this stuff happens on playgrounds — if they’re done right. If you build playgrounds that kids want to be on because there’s a lot that are built that kids just get bored of. There’s not prescribed route. There’s no specific thing…. You don’t walk up a stair, go across the bridge, go down the side. The way that KOMPAN designs their equipment is that kids have to use their imagination to figure out how to play.
“Kids who have a disability are told, ‘Go do the simple thing over in the corner and try to achieve.’ I was blessed with athletic ability at age 5. I was faster than everybody. I never had any kind of disability. I benefited and ultimately profited from it, but I’m very aware that there’s a large community of kids that starting at my age of 5 that never had that opportunity. More importantly, never had the chance to succeed and fail because they’re put into that ‘special category,’ which is unfortunate because most of life’s lessons come from trying and failing, so we hope to provide that for them.”
The partnership with Barber and KOMPAN to build the playground is but one part of LATCP. This summer, they’ll launch sports programs for kids of every background and ability. This fall, they’ll embark on a high school program called Achieve to teach students about inclusion. By February, they hope to hold a nationwide conference in New York City. Wednesday night’s event raised $6,000 through a silent auction (one person even won an impossible-to-get dinner reservation for four at Rao’s) to fund these dreams.
“We’re at the beginning stages. Once the playground is built, we’re going to build programs at the playground. I would love for [my son] to work the day we have programs at the playground — that we’re paying him, a person with disabilities, to work at our playground,” Weingarten said. “It’s the ultimate goal of being, just, normal, like every other kid, giving them opportunities.”
Photos by Lydia Orsi via LATCP.