The Right to Play Project is a grassroots effort to place safe, interactive and accessible playgrounds in communities throughout NE Missouri.  Unfortunately at this time, there are no fully accessible parks for children or parents who have mobility impairments.  The majority of parks in NE Missouri have major accessibility issues that limit their usage by the areas disabled population.  Barriers that have been noted include but are not limited to surfacing of pea gravel or other rock or sand, limited accessible parking, limited accessible restrooms in the area, limited to no curb cuts or ramps to the play area, no accessible swings, as well as the various barriers that restrict access to the play structures themselves.

Though NE Missouri is slowly improving access for persons with disabilities throughout our communities, we have many strides to take before we reach appropriate levels of accessibility.  Businesses are finally beginning to do their part to ensure access can be gained to their businesses by all populations.  NorthEast Independent Living Services has advocated for many persons with disabilities to gain access to the communities as well as their own homes.  Though most of our services have leaned more toward the disabled adult population, we had never truly considered the limited access to our area youth with disabilities.  That is where this journey has all began…

We began looking at the barriers still being faced and realized that we hadn’t considered accessibility options for our area youth with disabilities.  So what do our area youth do? Where do they go?  Where can our youth with disabilities go?  What fun things in the area are accessible for them?  Suddenly a light bulb went off!  Youth play in the parks, the parks throughout our communities….the parks that are not accessible!

So why The Right to Play Project?  ALL children have the right to play regardless of whether they have a disability or not.  It is the responsibility of our community and the resources within the community to give them an area to play just like the rest of our area youth.

We hope that you find that the Right to Play Project will open doors to children who have never been able to access a playground.  Let us all work together and show Missouri that we want to make our community accessible for ALL of our youth!