Volunteers Help To Build Playground For Homestead School

HOMESTEAD (KDKA) -- Thursday morning, it was an empty lot. Thursday evening, it's a playground.

The new playground for Propel Charter School in Homestead goes up almost as fast as you could say "KaBOOM!" And that happens to be the name of a national non-profit teaming up with the McDonald's Foundation to build play areas for kids who need it most.

Project manager Alec Stackhouse pumps energy into some 200 volunteers. This will be his 37th instant playground.

"We believe that play is so important in the development of children that we want to make sure we put a playground within walking distance of every child in America," he says. "That's our vision, and our mission. That's the reason we're here today, to fill in those gaps"

Volunteers include about 100 employees from McDonald's, and another hundred or so from the community. As they say, they go "from dirt to done" in six hours.

Kindergarten kids from Propel School, just across the street, painted rocks that will be implanted where they soon will come to play.

Principal Frank Brettschneider knows some of the older kids. They graduated from his school, and now they've come back to help.

"It's really exciting to see all these folks from all these different neighborhoods, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin," says the principal. "I can't believe we pulled so many people out to help with this."

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