Volunteers labor for school kids despite cold and snow

LAKEWOOD – Dozens of volunteers braced the snow and temperatures in the teens Saturday to build a playground for school-kids who had no place to play except a scruffy dirt lot.

“They are here to bring joy to the Center of Hope students. They are troopers,” Holly Santistevan said of the workforce toiling away in the blustery wind. “Their dedication to give their time in to come together in this freezing weather is a tribute.”

Santistevan is principal of Center of Hope Academy at Sheridan and West Kentucky Avenue.

The $65,000 of playground equipment, which sprang from the imagination of the charter-school’s pupils, was donated by the Coors family’s JCGC Foundation, was fabricated by a company in Pennsylvania from drawings the school kids put together.

“The kids has a design day to make a wish-list of the things they would like,” Santistevan said.

The project was nominated by the foundation and was selected by the KaBoom! Community Playground program, which has helped build 1,700 playgrounds nationwide.

“This is the first one built in the snow and the first one built in Lakewood,” Santistevan said as the volunteers continued their work in swirling snow, even after a noon-time break was called and despite the piping hot lunch waiting nearby.

“(It is) amazing to see people pull together in the community and work in the cold and snow to build a playground for the children to enjoy with laughter.”

Some of the K-12 academy’s 195 students already were smiling Saturday as they watched or assisted the swarm of volunteers laboring in the cold to bring the playground to life.

For many of the academy’s students, smiles can be few and far between.

Center of Hope Academy, a faith-based learning center that is part of the Hope Online education network, serves an area where “gangs, crime and violence are predominate,” according to the academy web site.

The majority of its students come from single-parent homes or are being cared for by other family members due to parental problems, sometimes including jail or drug problems.

But when they show up for school Monday morning, the school’s students will have a great reason to smile: The work was completed Saturday afternoon and a brand-new playground, including a climbing wall, awaits them.