Building Playgrounds Building Esteem A program dedicated to

Building Playgrounds, Building Esteem! A program dedicated to building special needs playgrounds in communities in New York for children who have disabilities. This program is designed to increase the children’s self esteem by giving them a playground (recreation & inclusion) to play on. By: Samantha Furco

Community Need Chart: This chart shows us that 150, 341 kids in New York State are disabled

Community Need Chart Data: http: //www. census. gov/compendia/statab/cats/population. html Here, is the data I used to find I had a need.

Logical Approach:

Literature Review: 1. Bhattacharya, et al. Evidence showed that not only does the school and home influence a child’s self esteem, but his or her “play life” also has a major role. Showed that children with disabilities are slower to develop emotional maturity because of the lack of places to play with peers. 2. Kodjebacheva Focused on 56 children with disabilities and studied them at a special needs playground. Found that they had few opportunities for functional play and did not engage in group social play, which ultimately lowered their self esteem. 3. Nosek Found that 22% of children with disabilities have low self esteem. Although this may seem low, its actually pretty high. This is higher than children who don’t have disabilities.

Reference List: 1. Bhattacharya, Sharika, Holly Cummings, Jordan Gilmore, Amanda Karr, Clint Lee , Jamie Olson, Jonathan Roberts, and Dora Syin. "Universal Playgrounds: Integrating All Children Through Play. " Gemstone Universal Playgrounds Teams. (2003): 1 -178. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. http: //www. gemstone. umd. edu/teams/documents/playgrounds. pdf 2. Kodjebacheva, Gergana. "Shane's Inspiration: An Assessment of a Playground for Children Living with and without Disabilities. " Children, Youth and Environments. 18. 2 (2008): 219 -235. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. http: //www. jstor. org. library. lemoyne. edu/stable/pdfplus/10. 7721/chilyoutenvi. 18. 2. 0219. pdf? accept. TC=true&jpd. Confirm=true 3. Nosek, Margaret. "National Study of Women with Physical Disabilities. " Center for Research on Women with Disabilities. (1996): n. page. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. https: //www. bcm. edu/research/centers/research-on-women-withdisabilities/? pmid=1408

Evaluation Plan: 1. Evaluation Question: Are children with disabilities who have access to a playground more likely to have higher self esteem then before the playground was installed? 2. Evaluation Design: O X O 3. Evaluation Statistics: 1. 2. Comparison of Means T-test

Evaluation Data: A screenshot of the self esteem survey I found from Performwell. com. Respondents were asked ten questions. The lowest they could score was a 0, the highest they could score was a 30.

Data Analysis T s e l p m Sa est T The chart above shows that after the program the child’s self esteem went up! …BUT! Don’t be fooled, here we see the P-Value is only. 797 meaning not a significant correlation.

Data Analysis n o i s s Regre In this regression we see that again the correlation between building playgrounds and self esteem is not significant.

Sustainability (Budget):