Playworks

Playworks' mission is to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play. Through play, kids learn about themselves and one another, and they develop important social skills such as self-efficacy, self-regulation, conflict resolution, and teamwork, which help them succeed in school and in life.<br><br>Through a mix of service offerings that range from day-long trainings to a full-time on-site Coach for the school year, we help our partner schools learn how they can leverage play to create a positive learning environment. We help teachers see how simple changes during the unstructured time of recess can have a huge impact on the entire school day. The result is dramatic, and research backs up what we see on the playground every day: kids are active and engaged, feel included, and treat one another with respect.

Every kid will have access to safe and healthy play every day.

Goal One: Playworks will support safe and healthy play for children in as many schools as we are able, while both drawing upon our core competencies and adapting to a new context

Goal Two: Playworks will invest in a transparent, equitable, and inclusive culture that builds trust for all employees and attracts, develops, retains and grows a racially diverse workforce and leadership.

Goal Three: Playworks will hold itself accountable to consistent fiscal policies to ensure financial health and enduring financial resilience.

Playworks has invested in outside expertise to train and support a 16-person Equity Team comprised of leaders from regional teams in both learning about diversity, equity and inclusion and developing Playworks' organizational commitments to DEI.

In response to teachers, principals and families struggling to support children in remote learning during the 2020-21 school year, Playworks developed a new virtual resource. Keep Playing, is a new subscription service for online play support that offers teachers and families a new game each week that they learn by watching a video and subsequently play with their students/children. Our team was able to develop, test and roll-out this new service despite the pressure of moving to remote work ourselves and having no ability to capture video of playing with children. Playworks offered this subscription service free to all Coach and TeamUp partners, in addition to serving 444 other schools and community-based organizations that paid for year-long subscriptions. All of this was an effort to increase access to play and make it as easy as possible during a very tough school year. A survey of Keep Playing users in June 2021 showed that 94% of educators felt that the games from Keep Playing helped their students feel more connected to their classmates. 90% of educators reported that Keep Playing increased their knowledge of ways play can support social and emotional learning, and 89% reported the games and ideas in Keep Playing helped reduce their stress. We’re also pleased to know that 87% used Keep Playing on at least a weekly basis last school year.