Getting Kids Outside for Better Health with the Makers of Claritin®

Priscilla Posada
Sep 29, 2021
Sep 29, 2021

For kids, spending time outside is a key ingredient in promoting physical and mental well-being. With this aim, the makers of Claritin® have made it their mission to provide caretakers and young people with imaginative ways to make every outdoor space the “unboring-est place to be” through their recently launched The Outsideologist Project.

Two young people play outside at Greenway Plaza in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of our local partners for the 2020 round of the Clarity Parks Project™.

At Project for Public Spaces, we couldn’t agree more. Together we’re expanding our partnership with Claritin® and continuing to build upon our work with them over the past year on the Clarity Parks Project™, which focused on restoring joy to parks in communities that had been affected by natural disasters. This year, the Clarity Parks Project™ seeks to encourage kids to spend more time outside by offering youth-focused programming and improving public spaces in three underserved communities across the United States.

Today, we’re thrilled to present the three recipients of the grants: Win in New York City, New York; the Hawthorne Community Center in Indianapolis, Indiana; and the Historic Market Square Gateway Plaza in San Antonio, Texas.

The Courtyard at Win.

Win (Brooklyn, New York)

Win transforms the lives of New York City homeless women and their children by providing a comprehensive solution of housing, critical services, and ground-breaking programs they need to succeed on their own, so these women can regain their independence and their children can look forward to a brighter future.

The team at Win are committed to ensuring young people in their care are provided with opportunities to engage in fun and nurturing activities. They’ve put a lot of love into creating a welcoming environment and we will expand this ethos into the rest of the courtyard.

The space we will be transforming—a paved courtyard—will be utilized by children living at two of Win’s sites: the brand new Shirley Chisholm Family Residence, which will provide shelter for 1,100 families over the next two years in tandem with a wide range of support programs for both adults and their children; and the nearby Rosa Parks Family Residence, which supports an additional 134 families.

This outdoor space will play a vital role in getting kids and teens outdoors since the closest local park is more than ten blocks away. Enhancements will also ensure that children in this community can have a fun place to learn and play right outside their home, with peers who are experiencing similar issues related to homelessness. Some potential ideas include a play area for toddlers, a sensory garden, landscaping to soften the space, and a basketball hoop for young people to de-stress.

The Hawthorne Community Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. Photo courtesy of the Hawthorne Community Center.

The Hawthorne Community Center (Indianapolis, Indiana)

In 1923, 50 neighborhood residents in Indianapolis’s westside community organized to save a small plot of land from becoming a railroad coal dump. Instead, the space became the Hawthorne Community Center, a beloved nonprofit with a mission to address the holistic needs of the greater Hawthorne community, whether they be economic, educational, financial, social, recreational, or cultural. Their small campus consists of a former Carnegie library built in 1908 that functions as a space for adult programming and a building renovated in 2015 that serves as a site for youth.

The Hawthorne Community Center has a strong relationship with the local community—a racially diverse, family-centric neighborhood with over three-fourths of households living below the federal poverty level—and would like to provide them with an outdoor green space to mingle and interact. They want to build on existing programming and explore how to empower young people through intentional academic enrichment, social skills development, and structured recreation activities that build academic, social, and life skills during out-of-school time.

The Hawthorne Community Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. Photo courtesy of the Hawthorne Community Center.

Together, we will partner on developing new programming and physical improvements. Some ideas that have been suggested already are a small stage for performances, a garden for hands-on learning, and a mini art gallery.

Market Square Underpass in San Antonio, Texas.

Market Square Underpass (San Antonio, Texas)

Just down the street from San Antonio’s historic Market Square, there is a new, empty, paved space located under the Interstate 35 expressway that is calling out for some love. Located near the Westside neighborhood, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Milam Park, and the Santa Rosa Children Hospital, this space has so much potential to become a great outdoor connector and vibrant active space for children, adolescents, and visitors of all ages.

Through collaboration with the Clarity Parks Project™, the Center City Development and Operations Department, and the 80/20 Foundation, Project for Public Spaces will work to transform this dark and empty space into a fun and inclusive public area for children and teens to enjoy. Transforming the Market Square underpass would also unlock the potential of this area by improving walking and biking connections to the Westside neighborhood and the University of Texas at San Antonio Downtown Campus.

Market Square Underpass in San Antonio, Texas.

We’re excited for this space for many reasons—structural shade in the heat of San Antonio is just one of many—and have sought inspiration in other underpass community spaces like Flyover Park in Calgary. Stakeholders are already excited to find local shade-loving plants to bring color and a natural environment to the underpass. While there are many potential ideas, such as a skate trail, ramps, painted asphalt, games, creative lighting, and play installations, the ultimate goal is to create an interactive area that invites youth and families to participate in outdoor activities under the bridge.

More Reasons to Play Outside

We believe that every community should strive to provide vibrant outdoor spaces for their youth. As the pandemic continues, access to these open-air refuges becomes more important than ever to promote holistic health. When we look at this paved courtyard, this space outside a library, and this highway overpass, we see spaces with the transformational potential to become community wellsprings that nourish young people and bring them together.

The Clarity Parks Project™ supports the dreams of these communities through grants and technical assistance dedicated to making the outdoors more enjoyable for kids through a combination of programming and physical improvements. Through their support, the makers of Claritin® are helping to bring kids and teens outdoors to play, imagine, and experience the joys of being together.

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