Prince William County Parks and Recreation, Amazon Web Services, and KABOOM! Unveil Kid-Designed, Community-Built Playground at Fairmont Park in Manassas

Volunteers from the community, along with staff and volunteers from Prince William County Parks and Recreation, KABOOM!, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) InCommunities pose for group photo to celebrate the completion of the playground build at Fairmont Park. (Photo by Tavan Smith)

Manassas, VA (October 28, 2024) — On Saturday, October 26, 2024, families in Manassas celebrated the completion of a kid-designed playspace at Fairmont Park. The months-long collaboration between Prince William County Parks and Recreation, Amazon Web Services (AWS) InCommunities, and KABOOM! culminated last week as 224 volunteers built the new playspace that will spark joy and foster a sense of belonging for more than 137,000 kids each year at the park.

Prince William County Parks and Recreation is committed to increasing park access and quality, ensuring that all kids have a safe and engaging park within a ten-minute walk or bike ride from their homes. This new playspace will provide more than 1,300 kids with a high-quality, safe place to play that is close to where they live and learn.

Community members led the creation of the playground, from design to installation. In August, 30 kids from Prince William County shared drawings of their dream playspaces with project organizers and those ideas were integrated into the new playground design. The new playground—larger than KABOOM!’s standard playground at 7,500 square feet—will provide hundreds of kids and their families with a renewed place to get active, build social bonds, and gather as a community.   

“We’re excited to bring this brand new, community-built playground to Fairmont Park, thanks to our partnership with KABOOM! and support from Amazon Web Services,” said Seth Hendler-Voss, director, Prince William County Parks and Recreation. “We know that play is an integral part of healthy childhood development and so the fact that this playground was designed with direct input from the children that will be using it makes it an even more special playspace for the community.”

AWS InCommunities has provided support for the new playground through its partnership with KABOOM!, furthering its commitment to ending playspace inequity. The playspace renovation is a part of AWS InCommunities’ commitment to giving back to the community where many Amazon Web Services employees live, work, and play with their families. 

“AWS’s commitment to communities is rooted in collaborating with local partners focused on bettering the communities where we operate," said Sarah Georgiades, head of InCommunities, Americas, AWS. "We're proud to amplify the efforts of organizations like Prince William County Parks and Recreation and KABOOM! to create welcoming spaces where children and families from all backgrounds and abilities can play and thrive. The new playspace at Fairmont Park is a testament to what we can achieve together, and we're excited to continue working alongside the Prince William County community to drive positive change."

The new playspace is part of a nationwide effort led by KABOOM! to end playspace inequity—the reality that far too many children– especially children of color—do not get the chance to play on a playground, something that should be part of every child’s life. Playing is the essence of childhood and is a critical developmental need that provides countless physical, social, and mental health benefits. However, far too many children, notably in communities of color, do not have a place to play near where they live or learn. The new playground at Fairmont Park, designed with the neighborhood’s unique needs and aspirations in mind, brings Prince William County one step closer toward ending playspace inequity and ensuring that no matter where a child lives or their background, they have limitless opportunities and joyful childhoods that are centered around play.

“Playgrounds are an iconic part of childhood where kids collect some of their best memories and experience the countless physical and mental health benefits of play,” said Lysa Ratliff, CEO of KABOOM!. “KABOOM! is thrilled to work with Prince William County Parks and Recreation and Amazon Web Services to bring to life the new playspace at Fairmont Park and ensure that generations of kids in Prince William County can grow up happy and healthy through access to playspaces where they feel they are valued and belong.”

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About Prince William County Parks and Recreation (DPR)
PWC Parks and Recreation operates a 5,000+ acre park system comprised of 81 properties and 60+ trail miles. Our staff operates a diverse portfolio of recreational facilities, services, and programs, hosting over 2 million visits annually and providing unique leisure experiences for residents of all ages, abilities, and recreational interests.

About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic regions, with announced plans for 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About KABOOM!
KABOOM! is the national nonprofit committed to ending playspace inequity – the reality that quality places to play are not available to every child, especially in communities of color. Since 1996, KABOOM! has partnered with kids and communities to build or improve 17,000+ playspaces and ensure that nearly 12 million kids have equitable access to the crucial benefits and opportunities that playspaces offer. In 2022, KABOOM! launched the 25 in 5 Initiative to End Playspace Inequity to accelerate its mission in 25 high-priority locations over five years. Learn more at kaboom.org or join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.