Building Playgrounds, Building Esteem!

1. 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

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

3. 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.

4. Logical Approach:

5. Literature Review: • 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. • 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. • 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.

6. Reference List: 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 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?acceptTC=true&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true 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-with-disabilities/?pmid=1408

7. Evaluation Plan: • 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? • Evaluation Design: O X O • Evaluation Statistics: • Comparison of Means • T-test

8. 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.

9. Data Analysis Samples T-Test 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.

10. Data Analysis Regression In this regression we see that again the correlation between building playgrounds and self esteem is not significant.

11. Sustainability (Budget):