Playgrounds

In 2005, the Village of Northbrook, IL was planning to replace its 10 year-old playground with a new style of playground. A friend and volunteer of ARM heard about the plans to destroy the Northbrook playground, and intervened and asked the Northbrook Park District for permission to take apart the playground piece by piece and ship it to Armenia. The commissioners of the park district agreed, and one construction crew and 30 volunteers later, the playground was labeled, photo-archived, disassembled and shipped to Armenia.

The Northbrook playground was so big it ended up in three different sites in Armenia. The first site was in the backyard of the ARM Medical Clinic. An orphanage in Vanadzor received the second portion of the playground, and the third piece was rebuilt at an orphanage in the capital city of Yerevan.

Each playground was reconstructed by a different volunteer team, (none of whom, by the way, are professional construction workers!) but all of whom must have played a lot with tinker toys when they were children. Hard work, team work, and help from local Armenians made it possible for each of these playground building projects to be a collaborative project with the children from the orphanages who play there to this day.