Darell Hammond
Darell Hammond
Darell Hammond is an American philanthropist, founder and chief executive officer of the non-profit organization KaBOOM! that helps communities build playgrounds for children. Very active in running the company, Hammond also speaks at conferences and universities about his work and blogs on The Huffington Post. Hammond, who from the age of four enjoyed a happy childhood in a group home founded by Moose International, began building playgrounds in college, founding KaBOOM! with a friend in 1996. He has received multiple...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
I hope my organization will not be around in 10 years, because at a national, state, and community level, we will have evolved into a society that cares about children and the need for play.
Our society spends a lot of money on prison bars. For the sake of our kids, let's invest in monkey bars.
Increased physical activity during the school day can help children's attention, classroom behavior, and achievement test scores. Meanwhile, the decline of play is closely linked to ADHD; behavioral problems; and stunted social, cognitive, and creative development.
We are raising today's children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are failing to cultivate artists, pioneers and entrepreneurs, and instead cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organized sports games, sit for hours in front of screens and mark bubbles on standardized tests.
During National Playground Safety Week, I'll celebrate common-sense safety. I'll also celebrate skinned knees and bruised elbows. I'll celebrate so-called 'dangerous' playgrounds - playgrounds with see-saws, zip lines and towering slides.
As parents, we need to send our kids back to 'old-fashioned' outdoor summer camps, which have been on the decline as the demand for sports and academics-based camps has risen. We need to fight budget cuts to public parks programs and resist closures of public swimming pools and playgrounds.
No child wants to fall off a jungle gym or slide. Accidents are an unfortunate fact of life, but to lower every last slide and jungle gym to a height that would only interest a toddler is doing our children a grave disservice.
Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.