LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The playground at the Mini-Versity Child Development Center isn’t the first playground Jonathan Boswell has helped to build in his neighborhood.  

“The playground is where all of your dreams and hopes really do come true,” says Boswell. 

The new playground will create years of fun for students at the Mini-Versity Child Development Center in the Russell neighborhood. 

Volunteers from the Russell neighborhood, KABOOM team and CarMax Cares came together to help build a playground (Spectrum News 1/Ashley N. Brown)

“Did you see them kids earlier when they let them outside to see this?” says Boswell. “The excitement, that was amazing.”

A grant from KABOOM, a national nonprofit that teams up with communities to build playgrounds made the project possible. 

“We work to end play space inequity. We think every kid deserves a great, quality, safe place to play close by, that they can get to and have access to and that they feel like they belong in,” says KABOOM project manager Bicki Rudd. 

About 200 volunteers including people from the Russell neighborhood, KABOOM team and CarMax Cares worked together to build the playground. (Spectrum News 1/Ashley N. Brown)

KABOOM let the kids at the center choose the design and components of the playground. 

“When you know that you’re really making a kid’s dream come true, it doesn’t really get any better than that,” says Rudd. 

Volunteers from the neighborhood and associates from nine different CarMax locations supplied the workforce to make the kids’ plan a reality. 

Boswell falls into both categories. 

“I’m a transplant at CarMax because I worked culinary for 15 years and COVID shut down the restaurant that I was working in,” says Boswell. 

Boswell counts it as a blessing that he ended up working for a company that is investing in the neighborhood he has called home for more than a decade. 

“It’s amazing what planting a tree does,” says Boswell. “I hope that it opens a community’s eyes a little bit and it gets more people involved and really want to make a difference for not just the kids and education centers, but some of these other parts in this town that could use a little facelift, a little life.”

He hopes those who came to lend a helping hand saw the beauty of the west end and the people who live there. 

“This community has helped me with hard times more than any community I’ve ever lived in,” says Boswell. “I hope that everybody sees that with just a little love and effort and time and energy you can take the stigma away.”

He believes that will also lead to building a stronger community. 

If you know of a neighborhood that needs a playground, you can visit kaboom.org to apply for a community-built play space grant.