Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Houston program builds a second playground, based on designs by primary school children.
If kids at Houston’s KIPP Climb Academy could have their way, there would be rockets, rock walls and the world’s biggest slides at the back of their school. Unfortunately, the rocket couldn’t be accommodated, but the rock walls and slides they drew in in their “dream playground” designs earlier this year have been included in the second Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Houston playground build.
The Morgan Stanley program built the first playground at KIPP Unity Primary last year, as part of the two-year initiative. Morgan Stanley’s Healthy Cities program, now in nine global locations, is designed to create hubs where national and local nonprofit organizations can congregate to provide the basics underserved children need to flourish.
Apart from safe places to play, those basics include food, health screenings and wellness education. So far, the Houston program has provided 939,466 pounds of food and 3,850 health screenings. In all, about 2,600 Houston children and their families across nine schools will receive more than 1.1 million healthy meals, nutrition education, health screening and snack programs. Over 1,500 students will have also received customized fitness programs and 1,000 kids will benefit from the two new playgrounds.
Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities was launched in 2014 and has since delivered programming in Chicago, IL; Newark , NJ; Oakland, CA; London, UK; Cleveland, OH; Houston, TX, Mumbai, India and New Orleans, LA.
Read more about Morgan Stanley’s Healthy Cities program.