Volunteers build playground for Homeland community

When the Community First Church of God in Homeland was burned to the ground by an arsonist in 2016, Pastor Mike Gratzke said not to re- decision was build the building but to rebuild the community. The church now hosts services on Sundays and serves as a community center every other day.

A new playground, built in five hours Saturday, Jan. 28, with the help of more than 150 volunteers, is the most recent addition to the center. As part of the commitment to the residents of Homeland, church members completed an application to KABOOM!, a nonprofit that builds playgrounds all over the country.

Headquartered in Washington, the organization has a team that works with different funding partners to build playgrounds where they are needed and requested. In this case they collaborated with Pacific Dental Services, one of the nation’s leading dental support organizations.

The church was the community partner component and supported about 10% of the financial cost and many church members pitched in to help. Laura Vicky Pleasant, who regularly assists with the church’s food bank program, helped give the center’s shed a fresh coat of paint.

Gratzke said it took about six to seven months of cooperative meetings with the community to finalize a design for the playground. Children were asked to draw their ideal playground and based on all the input, KABOOM! presented three designs for the church to choose from.

KABOOM! project manager Derrick Dixon and about five other company representatives were on site to oversee the project.

“We have built over 3,000 playgrounds since we started in 1996,” he said. “This is our first project of 2023; we’re kicking the year off with a bang.”

The playground was assembled on a 2,500 square foot area already chiseled out but filled with dirt.

Volunteers from Mt. San Jacinto College and the church cleared it out a couple of days earlier to