Boston, MA—June 14, 2016—Classy, the world’s first social impact platform with the goal of helping organizations solve social problems more effectively and efficiently, today announced Playworks as a finalist for the 6th Annual Classy Awards. The Collaborative + Classy Awards bring together top social innovators from around the world for a unique three-day experience of speaker series and networking opportunities that culminates in the Classy Awards. This year’s event will take place June 14-16, 2016, in Boston’s Innovation District.
“The Classy Awards team spends a year extensively researching social innovations from around the world. We’ve been fortunate to discover some incredible organizations over the past few years, but this year’s pool of nominees is one of the strongest we’ve ever seen! We’re honored to play a role in convening leaders throughout the sector to recognize their efforts,” said Pat Walsh, Co-Founder and CIO of Classy.org.
“Playworks has a big goal: to make sure that every child has the opportunity to experience safe, healthy play–every day. It is honored to be a finalist in the 6th Annual Classy Award, and we are proud to join so many incredible organizations working on innovative solutions for social change,” said Jon Gay, executive director of Playworks Massachusetts.
Playworks is the leading national nonprofit leveraging the power of play to transform children’s social and emotional health. Playworks currently serves more than 1,300 schools in 23 U.S. cities, and reaches more than 700,000 students directly and through professional training services. Playworks is changing school culture by leveraging the power of safe, fun, and healthy play at school every day by creating a place for every kid on the playground to feel included, be active, and build valuable social and emotional skills.
This year, Classy reviewed over 1,300 program submissions from 1,100 global organizations. This year, Finalists were awarded based on their scale and scope of the problem, an innovative approach; ability to solve the problem; and organizational effectiveness. Of the 100 finalists selected from the submissions 10 winners will be chosen by the Leadership Council and announced on stage at the Classy Awards.
The Finalists recognized this year are addressing the incredibly complex and equally severe problems we face today. Their efforts span global poverty and hunger, disease, education, climate change, disaster response and preparedness, and health care accessibility.
The Collaborative + Classy Awards, presented by Southwest Airlines and Classy, are produced in partnership with Guidestar, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Salesforce.org, Plenty Consulting, WePay, GOOD, GLG, Babson College, and Echoing Green. For more information on the Collaborative + Classy Awards and to register for the event, visit www.classy.org/collaborative.
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About Classy
Classy is the world’s first social impact platform with the goal of helping organizations solve social problems more effectively and efficiently. Since launching in 2011, Classy has helped more than 2,500 social enterprises including Oxfam, World Food Program USA, and National Geographic to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Classy also hosts the Collaborative and Classy Awards to recognize excellence in social innovation. Based in San Diego, CA, Classy employs a staff of over 180 people and was recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the world’s 10 Most Innovative Companies for Social Good. Classy is backed by investors including Mithril and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.classy.org or follow Classy on Twitter: @Classy.
