The Life is good Kids Foundation is dedicated to helping children overcome life-threatening challenges such as violence, poverty and severe illness. Leading this charge with us are thousands of teachers, counselors, social workers and healthcare professionals who have dedicated their lives to healing and strengthening children. We call these amazing men and women, Playmakers. By providing play-based training, support, and resources to these frontline community heroes, the Life is good Kids Foundation is helping children reach their full, joyful potential.
Help us help them
You can support the Life is good Playmaker movement by participating in the 2010 Life is good Festival and our summer fundraising campaign. Click here to help us today!
Mississippi's Gulf Coast Children: A Study in Joy
It is hard to believe that it was five years ago this month that Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast. Repairing the damage — both physical and emotional — has been a long-term struggle for residents of the area. Life is good Playmakers continue to play a major part in the healing. Shortly after the storm, we certified over 400 early childcare providers to implement Playmaker programming (then called Project Joy programming) with preschoolers whose lives were torn apart by the hurricane.
A Break in the Clouds, a documentary film by Aimee Corrigan and Franco Sacchi, tells the uplifting story of Mississippi's rebuilding…one child at a time.
A film by Aimee Corrigan + Franco Sacchi. Original music by Jono Edwards.
Measurable Results
Mississippi State University conducted a research study to determine the impact of Playmaker activities, using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (Preschool Edition). Findings showed that children who participated in playgroups conducted by Playmakers had statistically significantly lower levels of depression, anxiety, anger and isolation than children who had not participated in Playmakers playgroups. In addition, participating children had far higher overall improvement scores in social and emotional functioning than non-participants.
Help us help kids
You can support the Life is good Playmaker movement by participating in the 2010 Life is good Festival and our summer fundraising campaign. Click here to help us today!
The short video below spotlights Kim Haywood, one of more than 800 New England-based child care providers who have received training and support from Life is good Playmakers. Kim attended her first Life is good Playmaker training retreat (then called Project Joy training) 3 years ago. She has brought most of her fellow staff from the Labouré Center to follow up trainings and has advocated for Playmaker games and activities to be implemented throughout the center. Kim embodies the Playmaker spirit and believes passionately in the power of play to heal and strengthen.
Video by Aimee Corrigan.
Violence, poverty and severe illness affect over 20 million children each year. The trauma of these experiences can threaten a child's life. Watch the video below for more on this national health crisis and to learn about how you can help the Life is good Playmakers make a difference.
Video by Aimee Corrigan.
Help us help them
You can support the Life is good Playmaker movement by participating in the 2010 Life is good Festival and our summer fundraising campaign. Click here to help us today!
Playmakers are certified at our two-day training retreats, which are offered throughout the United States on an ongoing basis. Our Playmakers are leading a grassroots movement that fully values the essential importance of play in shaping the healthy social, emotional, and physical development of all children — especially our poorest and most vulnerable children.
The Life is good Kids Foundation currently provides full scholarships to direct service providers who are working with our target population (groups of children ages 3 to 6 who are living in poverty and/or who have experienced trauma). Scholarships cover training tuition, food, lodging, playkit equipment, and follow-up support and consultation. Training Retreat attendees are only asked to cover a small $35 individual registration fee to secure a spot in a Retreat.
Playfulness is the single most important quality that we can nurture in our children. It is the basic human drive to explore and connect with the world around us. What could be more important than that?
The most meaningful education in a person's life is learning to play as a child. Play is how children form healthy attachments, discover the world around them, and develop a foundation of competence, self-worth, and joy that can impact them for a lifetime.
Without joyful play, no child can grow up healthy. Young children who have experienced profound trauma in any of its many forms — including poverty, violence natural disaster or severe illness — often need specialized guidance to help them engage the world playfully. Regardless of the obstacle, play is an essential antidote to adversity for every child on earth.
Life is good Playmakers are on a mission to use the healing power of play to transform children sidelined by personal trauma into enthusiastic players in the game of life - so that they can reach their full potential and successfully meet life's biggest challenges. Play is important for all children. For some, it can save their lives.
The Life is good Playmaker Training Retreat gives childcare professionals the essential tools that they can easily apply in any work environment — as well as in their everyday lives. In addition to learning a host of innovative play activities that are designed to nurture healthy social and emotional development in children, our training retreats provide opportunities for participants to reflect on their experiences, indulge their own playfulness, explore their own creativity, and develop a strong, loving support community.
Life is good Playmakers know that you need joy to spread joy. More specifically, it is difficult for childcare professionals to fully nurture the social and emotional development of the children in their care if they themselves are socially and emotionally depleted. Caring for our nation's caregivers is paramount to our training approach. We're not sure who is going to have more fun - the teachers or their children!
In 1989, Steven Gross started a small, grassroots nonprofit organization called Project Joy. The mission of Project Joy was to ensure that nothing destroyed the joy and playfulness of children. Nothing.
Each week, students from Harvard University would pick up homeless preschoolers and their teachers from the Salvation Army Daycare Center in Cambridge, MA and drive them to The Academy of Physical and Social Development's gym in nearby Newton. While there, Steve and his OPs (Original Playmakers) would run, jump, play and laugh with the children until everyone left the gym exhilarated and exhausted! The results were amazing. In just one short hour each week, tears turned to smiles, cries to laughter, and fear to confidence. Everyone, including the Playmakers, was inspired by the results.
In 1991, Steve moved the gym closer to the children. The Cambridge YWCA donated an old van and a barren gym space that the Playmakers transformed into a young child's dream - complete with platforms for climbing, huge mats for jumping, suspended ropes for swinging, and space galore for dancing, singing, running, and playing. In addition to the children from the Salvation Army, the Playmakers began providing weekly playgroups to several other organizations caring for the community's most impoverished and vulnerable children.
With only one gym space available for just 25 hours a week, there was a limit to how many children Project Joy could help. Steve and his team wanted to do more. They began to take their show on the road and began running playgroups inside preschools, housing developments, and shelters throughout Greater Boston. The team of Playmakers grew, and joy and laughter echoed throughout the streets.
Around this time, Life is good co-founders Bert and John Jacobs were busy driving up and down the east coast in their van selling t-shirts at college dormitories and street fairs. For more on their early years, click here. In between road trips they always found time to help their boyhood friend Steve Gross and Project Joy. They played hoops in countless fundraising tournaments, made t-shirts for all their events, designed the first Project Joy logo, and even helped to paint the gym in Cambridge. Bert and John believed in Project Joy from the very beginning.
Life is good's commitment to Project Joy flourished over the years, as did its business. Life is good began holding playful, outdoor festivals to raise money for Project Joy. This steady influx of funding allowed Project Joy to strengthen, grow, and ultimately help more children.
In 1998 Project Joy had a big idea. They saw the immediate impact of their work on children's development, but they knew that their one-hour-a-week play sessions were only giving children "pockets of joy and playfulness." They realized that real, life-changing impact could only be realized if they partnered more closely with the local community and empowered the adults closest to these children with the knowledge, skills and resources to heal and strengthen them through play. These childcare professionals were the experts in the lives of their children and it was through these close relationships that true healing would occur.
In 2010, Project Joy officially became part of the Life is good Kids Foundation. While the name Project Joy is no more, its work continues, now backed by greater resources and support than ever before.
To read and see how the Playmakers are positively impacting the children of Haiti, please click here.
Our work along the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina provides a compelling example of the impact of our approach. Several months after the storm, Project Joy certified over 400 early childcare providers to implement Playmaker programming with preschoolers who had survived the devastation of the storm. Mississippi State University conducted a research study to determine the impact of these activities, using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (Preschool Edition). Findings showed that children who participated in playgroups conducted by Playmakers had statistically significantly lower levels of depression, anxiety, anger and isolation than children who had not participated in Playmakers playgroups. In addition, participating children had far higher overall improvement scores in social and emotional functioning than non-participants.
Behind the postcard perfect surf, tropical flowers, and grass skirts there is another Hawaii, a Hawaii landscaped by generational poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, and early childhood trauma. Enter Project Joy and the Keiki Steps program. Click to learn more.
When Jackie Neel, Deputy Director of the Department of Human Services in Cambridge (DHSP) met with the city's Staff Training Committee to organize trainings for the Out of School Time staff working in the Department's 25+ afterschool programs, many of the staff spoke about the Project Joy's Playmaker Training Retreats. From there, a new partnership was born. Click to learn more.
For children whose lives are devastated by neglect and domestic violence, the Bridge Home, a program of St. Mary's Woman and Children's Center in Dorchester, is a safe haven. Click to learn more about the heroes of the Bridge Home and how they are bringing more joy into the lives of the children they work with.