Playground at Willow Oaks Elementary Built in a Day

As a child, her favorite part of the playground was the hopscotch.

“When I was 6, this was my home,” said Adobe employee Kathleen Wong, as she held a paintbrush doused with yellow paint in her hand.

Wong put the finishing touches on a brightly colored hopscotch that she was painting on the playground Wednesday afternoon, completing the section that she had volunteered to update.

Wong was part of a group of volunteers from Silicon Valley technology companies who took a day off work to build a playground for the children who attend school in the Ravenswood City School District, which serves about 600 children from Menlo Park and East Palo Alto.

Some, like SAP employee Alex Liu, came all the way from Los Angeles to help.

“I’m amazed that we did all this in a day,” Liu said, noting that his team was in charge of moving the mulch. 

“This playground is better than the one at the park near where I live,” Liu said. 

More than a hundred volunteers from SAP America Inc., Adobe, and KaBoom! started putting the playground together at 9 a.m., and finished around 2:30 in the afternoon. They installed play structures that include a large purple slide, a geodesic dome for climbing, a scavenger hunt area, and swings. 

The old playground had been there for more than two decades, according to Willow Oaks Principal Cindy Chin, who expressed her gratitude during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world,” Chin said as she stood on the freshly mulched playground next to Ravenswood Superintendent Maria de la Vega.

“You’ve changed ours.”