The Merrill Park Playground Makeover #LetsPlayMilwaukee
While I pretty much always love my job and enjoy the opportunities to review products and experience new places, some projects wind up claiming a piece of my heart and making me smile long after they are completed. My partnership with Dr Pepper Snapple Group, KaBOOM!, and the folks of the Merrill Park Neighborhood on the is one of those projects.
Let me bring you up to speed in case you are new to Wisconsin Mommy. It all started back last winter when I was invited to sit in on a webinar that brought me behind the scenes at Dr Pepper Snapple group. I learned all about how they come up with flavors and also about their philanthropic programs including Let’s Play, one that helps to provide playgrounds to under-served communities.
A few months back, I shared that I was invited to become involved in Dr Pepper Snapple Group and KaBOOM!’s local project with Milwaukee’s own Merrill Park. I attended the first planning meeting and followed along as an amazing group of people took this idea and turned it into a actual physical reality. It was an incredibly inspiring experience and one that will definitely go down as a favorite project in my heart.
All of the planning meetings culminated in Build Day on September 12th. While it is true that the actual building had the playground up in just a matter of hours, I don’t want to gloss over the amount of work the committee put in ahead of build day. In addition to physical meetings, they held weekly planning calls and put in several days of prep digging holes and cutting wood so that build day could go smoothly.
Build day was amazing. We lucked out with one of those gorgeous fall days Wisconsin can provide – not too hot or too cold, bright and perfect. It’s one of those experiences that is hard to describe. I tried to capture some of it here:
I also loved watching all the different members of the community working together – seeing the Milwaukee police hauling mulch along side the students from Marquette University High School was a great sight.
Learn more about the different organizations that helped makeover the Merrill Park Playground:
and be sure to check out Nicole’s post about her experience at a similar build in Texas.
It’s always nice when an older park gets a new makeover! I’m sure the kids really appreciate the efforts! It’s looks great!
What a fun makeover project to take part in! I hope to see this happen in more communities around the country.
I really love that the community pitches in on these types of projects. This gives everyone a chance to get to know each other better.
I love to see communities getting together and working as a team for the better of the town. This is so awesome to see their project come to fruition!
What a beautiful project.This kind of project is really something good to improve our societies and our involvment in society
Wow they’re doing something so good for the community. It’s so cool that everyone from police officers to students was involved.
It’s so refreshing to see companies come together to build something to help out a community. So great that the police officers and students helped, too – truly a community project. Great job!
This is so awesome that there were so many great volunteers to help with this. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of happy kids.
What a wonderful group effort! As a mom of 2 young kids, I love a good playground makeover! 🙂
What an amazing opportunity that must have been. I love being able to help my community.
It’s nice seeing community working in unison for the play ground. I’m sure they were able to do it faster and also had more ideas from their collective minds.
So cool! It’s good to see corporations give back to the community like that. Usually, the people volunteering get a lot out of those experiences as well!
I’ve actually been thinking about ways to give back to my community, and being a volunteer for something like this looks like a lot of fun. I will have to look into what is available for me to participate in.
What an awesome thing to be a part of! Think of how many lives you helped change by being a part of that playground redo!!
This is amazing! I had the chance to help build a playground back when I was in high school as a service project and it’s one of those experiences that will stick with me forever.
My son participated in the building of a playground. Even though they moved quickly, a ton of work went into making it happen. My son was exhausted but proud. what a great thing to be a part of!
Isn’t it wonderful to donate your time for a good cause such as this. What a great job they did for all those children, and the community. Thanks for sharing.
It’s such a nice program to provide for playgrounds in a certain area. I was once a part of a campaign like that from J&J