Run, Walk or Recycle Your Way to Playground Donations

A Memorial Run to Benefit the Kids Castle Playground—and many other ways to support the Playground.

 On April 13, the fourth annual Megan Durst Memorial 5k Run and Family Walk will take place at the Strawberry Ridge Golf Course in Harmony.

Megan was a life-long resident of Cranberry Township. Her husband and two young children still live here in Cranberry and they honor her memory every year with the memorial run. 

This year, instead of contributing the proceeds toward a scholarship fund in Megan’s name, the family has decided to donate the proceeds to the Kids Castle Playground. 

Their hope is to raise at least $5,000 so they can place a bench in the playground area in memory of Megan. What a wonderful way to get out there and support TWO very worthy causes !  

I would like to thank Megan’s family in advance for donating the proceeds to the playground, and hope they are able to raise enough to get the park bench in Megan’s honor. 

If you are interested in participating in the Megan Durst Memorial 5k Run, please visit www.megansmission.org to register. 

We will have our own dedicated Kids Castle 5K run and 1 mile family walk/run that will take place at the Cranberry Park and will mark the last official day of service for the Playtime Palace on April 20. I will have more details on that race next week. 

In addition to the Dine to Donate program at Quaker Steak and Lube (first Monday of every month), we hope to announce some other Dine to Donate or similar programs with Chick-Fil-A, Jersey Mike’s and Fun-Fore-All.

As soon as we can figure out the details, we will be sure to let you all know!

Moe’s $1 donation per Burrito purchase in February netted $6,000 (!) for the playground! That’s A LOT of burritos.

A big thanks to all those who ate and ate and also of course, a HUGE Thank You to MOE’s ! We could not do this without the support of our community!

Grace Community Church has donated another $2,500 towards the playground, bringing their total donation amount to $6,000.

This is part of their "50/50 Challenge Project," which also includes church members volunteering many hours helping out on various playground projects—THANKS!

Also, Jim Logan of the soon-to-open Battery Giant, located on 10 St Francis Way in Cranberry, will be making a donation to the playground for every battery recycled on April 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

April 13 also marks the grand opening of Battery Giant, which will accept all batteries for recycling—including large lead batteries. This could be an on-going recycling event that will continue to benefit the playground.

I am just so thankful to have a place to drop off all my used up batteries instead of keeping them until a hazardous waste drive comes to town every few months.  Check out the new Battery Giant and make sure to save your old batteries and donate towards the Kids Castle Playground! Thanks JIM!

OK, so that all sound amazing and wonderful and, of course, it is! However, we still need to raise another $220,000 to be able to build the playground to 100 percent of its imagined design. 

We are hoping to bring in most of this money by the end of May because we will be ordering and begin installing the playground equipment in June. June will be here before you know it! 

If you are thinking about making a donation or offering to help out…go ahead and do it now! 

We still need more Neighborhood Ambassadors.  I was able to address all my neighborhood envelopes and write all my letters with the help of my color copier in about 20 minutes on Sunday afternoon. I was probably watching the hockey game and eating snacks too – it was that easy!

These Ambassador letters will go out in early May, so there is still time to do this. 

I also wanted to mention a way to combine your donations with family, friends or neighbors. 

My parents, who live in New York state, were willing to match our personal contribution and join their contribution with ours so we could get a “bigger” paver to accommodate our four children’s names. 

Neighborhoods could easily combine funds and use them to recognize the entire neighborhood formally on a paver. 

An 8 x 8 paver has 6 lines for $500. Five families could each contribute $100 towards the paver and all five families could get their names on the paver. 

Like wise, a 1 x3 Plaque is $150 and can accommodate 25 letters. If your children or parents or grandparents would be tickled to see their names on a paver at the playground there are many, many options. It's almost as good as going to Disney to see your brick….well, almost!

On a final note, the wonderful residents of Sherwood Oaks are currently surveying and evaluating more than 3,500 playground design drawings from all the elementary children. 

This evaluation will determine the final design of the “Today” section of the playground. The drawings will be returned, including the “playground designer membership cards” to the children who participated the week of March 25.