June 12, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Photograph © 2008 Playworld Systems ® Inc.
Amy Jaffe Barzach still gets emotional describing the day 14 years ago when she witnessed a young girl in a wheelchair sitting dejectedly at the edge of a playground.
“I can still see the longing in her eyes,” says Ms. Barzach, who was visiting the playground near her home in West Hartford, Conn., with her two sons, Daniel, age 3, and Jonathan, nine months.
Later that year, when Jonathan was diagnosed with a fatal disease and given only a short time to live, Ms. Barzach conjured the image of the wheelchair-bound girl and resolved to do something in Jonathan’s honor: build a playground that would allow kids with and without disabilities to play side by side.
She recruited hundreds of volunteers, raised $350,000, and in 1996 a new playground — featuring special ramps, waist-high sand tables, and extra-wide play areas — opened in her hometown. A tiny item about the playground in Time magazine drew so much attention that Ms. Barzach started a new organization, Boundless Playgrounds, just to field the requests for help from interested parents, teachers, and public officials around the country.
Since then, Boundless Playgrounds has raised more than $10-million, helping to build 129 play areas in 24 states and Canada. It provides some money to many of the building projects, but its main role is to lend advice on design and construction, share resources, and help with fund raising.
Ms. Barzach says her goal is that by 2020 “people wouldn’t even think of building a playground that segregates by abilities.”
“All playgrounds for all people,” she says.
Here, children have fun on the jungle gym at the All Access Boundless Playground, in West Dennis., Mass.
