Stories of Play

After graduating from Kalamazoo College, Imani Sims knew she wanted to become a leader in her home city of Detroit. She was inspired by the Playworks mission and, in 2014,…

JG Larochette came to work for Playworks during its Sports4Kids days and ultimately went on to become a teacher, starting as a sub at the Richmond, CA elementary school where…

"The sport, recreation and play domain, far from being trivial, is essential for fully realizing the human rights promise" —Anne Hubbard, The Major Life Activity of Belonging (2004) I met…

First as the director of the Florida State Parks and later as the first woman Director of the National Park Service back in 2001, Fran Mainella worried about the absence…

If you ask a grown-up of a certain age about the Presidential Youth Fitness Test, you are likely to get one of two responses. Half of the people (and I…

“There’s a lot of things we can do to put [playing] back in—number one, making sure kids have recess at school. That’s where they’re spending most of their time. That…

In honor of our 20th anniversary, Playworks is sharing stories of other nonprofits transforming kids and communities through the power of play. BoomShake is a multicultural music and movement community…

In 2010, Billy Watterson was a freshman at Brown University and on the wrestling team. When a wrestling alum dragged Billy out to volunteer in the Providence community through Junior…

Janet Carter’s path to the role of executive director at Coaching Corps is not one you might expect: she spent the first twenty years of her career working to end…