Foresters, KaBOOM! & Volunteers Build New Playground for View Park Children

Child-Designed Playground will Eventually Serve 150 Children and their Families

LOS ANGELES, May 15 /PRNewswire/ - View Park Preparatory Charter Elementary received a brand new playground today thanks to the effort of more than 200 volunteers from Foresters(TM), ICEF Public Schools and non-profit KaBOOM!. The new playground will provide more than 150 children and their families in the View Park community with a great place to play for years to come.

"Foresters is more than a life insurance provider," said Arny Bereson, Director, Member Development with Foresters. "Foresters also invests in its members and in communities where they live, such as View Park. Foresters believes in creating opportunities for families to spend time together, like the playground we all built together."

Foresters, a life insurance provider committed to the well-being of families, is funding 20 playground builds across North America in 2010. By investing $1.5 million in these projects, Foresters is partnering with KaBOOM! to build playgrounds that will eventually serve more than 150,000 children and create opportunities for families to spend time together.

The playground at View Park Preparatory Charter Elementary will provide more than 150 children and 100 families in the View Park community with a great place to play. In less than eight hours, the child-designed playground was built from scratch by hundreds of volunteers from Foresters, ICEF Public Schools and the surrounding community. Playgrounds provide an opportunity for families to spend quality time together and get to know other families in their community.

"The fact is that with children in America in a state of obesity we need to do everything we can to not only give them the best academically but also physically," said Robin Harris, Principal of View Park Preparatory Charter Elementary School, an ICEF Public School.

"There have been studies done and those students who are more physically active and physically fit do better in school," said Harris. "We here at View Park Prep Elementary have been given an opportunity of a lifetime for our students, thanks to Foresters seeing a need and meeting it head on."

Thanks to the work of Foresters, ICEF Public Schools and KaBOOM!, children and their families now have a 2,279 square-foot playground to call home that includes features such as a Rock Blocks Zigzag slide, a Loopy Whoop and a Wacky Log.

Foresters investment in this playground extends beyond the work completed on build day. Foresters volunteers and the community have made a commitment to maintain the playground to ensure it is available for subsequent generations of parents and children.

About ICEF/View Park Preparatory Charter Elementary School

ICEF Public Schools (Pronounced "Eye-ceff," for the Inner City Education Foundation) was founded in 1994 to transform the Los Angeles community by creating first-rate educational opportunities for its minority youth. ICEF currently operates 15 public charter schools, including three new schools which opened this fall, with the goal of preparing its students to attend and compete academically at the top colleges and universities in the nation. ICEF's flagship school, View Park Preparatory Charter Elementary School, was opened in 1999, consistently outperforms all neighborhood schools and has closed the achievement gap for African American students.

About Foresters

Founded in 1874 as a fraternal benefit society, Foresters(TM) champions the well-being of families through quality life insurance, unique member benefits and inspiring community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with more than 675,000 members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Unity Life of Canada‡, a wholly owned subsidiary of Foresters, represents Foresters in Canada. For more information, please visit www.foresters.com.

Foresters(TM) is a trademark of The Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9.

‡ Unity Life of Canada, a Foresters company, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Independent Order of Foresters

About KaBOOM!

KaBOOM! is a national non-profit organization that envisions a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America. Since 1996, KaBOOM! has used its innovative community-build model to bring together business and community interests to construct more than 1,700 new playgrounds, skate parks, sports fields and ice rinks across North America. KaBOOM! also offers a variety of resources, including an online community, regional and national trainings, grants, publications and the KaBOOM! National Campaign for Play, which includes Playful City USA and the Playmaker Network - a national network of individual advocates for play. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. KaBOOM! also has offices in Chicago and San Mateo, Calif. For more information, visit www.kaboom.org.

SOURCE Foresters

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