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About Project Playground

Eighteen years of rescuing playgrounds that no one wanted and giving them to communities that needed them most.

Our Founder

A Playground Nobody Wanted Changed Everything

In 2008, I watched a crew haul a perfectly good playground to the landfill. Climbing structures, slides, swings — 20 years of use, replaced for cosmetic reasons. Something about that didn't sit right with me.

That same year, I'd just come back from a mission trip to Honduras. Kids there played on bare dirt lots — no equipment, no shade, no safe space. The contrast between those two images wouldn't leave me. I called the Houston school district and asked a simple question: "What if someone took it instead?"

That question became Project Playground. With a borrowed trailer, a crew of friends, and zero budget, we deconstructed that first playground piece by piece, shipped it to a Honduran village, and spent two weeks rebuilding it with community volunteers. The day it opened, kids who had never seen a slide before waited in line for hours.

Eighteen years and 101 playgrounds later, that original impulse — don't waste what can transform a life — still drives everything we do.

How We Work

The Deconstruct-Rebuild Model

A brand-new commercial playground can cost $75,000 or more — an impossible number for the communities we serve. Our model changes the math entirely by starting with what already exists.

When a U.S. school or park retires a playground, we step in before the bulldozer arrives. Volunteer teams carefully disassemble every component — posts, decks, slides, swings, safety surfacing — document, clean, and prepare each piece for international shipping.

At the other end, local community members work alongside our mission trip volunteers to rebuild it at its new home. That community participation isn't optional — it's the whole point. People who build a playground together take care of it for decades.

$5K

Average cost per rebuild

$75K

Cost of new equipment

15× Further

Every dollar goes in our model

Why It Matters

The Power of Play

A playground is never just equipment. Research consistently shows that unstructured outdoor play drives development across every dimension of a child's life.

Physical Health

Regular active play builds cardiovascular endurance, bone density, and motor coordination. In communities with limited sports infrastructure, a playground may be the only structured physical activity available to children — making it a genuine public health intervention.

Mental Wellness

Outdoor play reduces anxiety, builds resilience, and provides a healthy outlet for stress. For children in low-resource environments who face instability at home or in their community, a safe play space offers a critical sense of normalcy and joy.

Social Skills

Playgrounds are where children learn to negotiate, take turns, resolve conflict, and cooperate without adult direction. These self-organized social experiences are foundational to empathy, leadership, and the ability to work collaboratively throughout life.

Education

Active children are more attentive students. Schools near playgrounds report higher attendance rates and improved classroom focus. Play also develops spatial reasoning, problem-solving, and early numeracy through games — learning that happens organically, without a curriculum.

Community Building

A playground becomes a gathering place for the whole community — not just children. Parents meet neighbors, local events happen naturally, and the shared responsibility of maintaining the space builds civic pride and collective ownership that extends far beyond the playground itself.

Safety

Without a designated play space, children play in streets, near waterways, or in areas with genuine hazards. A fenced, surfaced playground keeps children in a visible, protected environment — reducing accidents and giving parents and caregivers peace of mind.

Creativity

Unstructured play sparks imagination. Children invent games, build narratives, and transform a climbing structure into a pirate ship or a rocket. This imaginative freedom develops flexible thinking and creative problem-solving — skills that matter enormously in adult life and entrepreneurship.

Problem Solving

Climbing, balancing, and navigating playground equipment requires constant micro-decisions — risk assessment, physical calculation, trial and error. Children who engage in challenging physical play develop persistence and a healthy relationship with failure that translates directly into academic and professional resilience.

The People Behind the Work

Meet Our Volunteers

Sarah Chen

Lead Build Coordinator — 6 Mission Trips

Sarah joined Project Playground as a first-time volunteer in 2018, expecting to spend a week in Guatemala with a hammer. What she found was a second family and a calling. A structural engineer by trade, she brought technical rigor to the rebuild process — developing the assembly documentation system still used on every mission trip today.

"The moment the kids ran onto the finished playground for the first time, I understood why Matt has been doing this for 18 years. There's nothing else like it."

James Okafor

Teardown Team Lead — 12 Deconstructions

A retired electrician from Conroe, Texas, James has participated in more playground deconstructions than anyone in the organization's history. He leads teardown weekends with military precision — cataloguing components, training first-timers, and ensuring nothing goes to waste. He donates 3-4 weekends per year to the cause.

"People think it's just taking stuff apart. But every bolt you save is a piece of a playground for a kid who doesn't have one. That keeps me showing up."

You're Part of This Story

It started with one question and a borrowed trailer. It grows because people like you show up — with a donation, a weekend, or a willingness to travel. The next chapter is yours.

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