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Friday Night Lights is an open-air event held the first Friday of the month at Elm Playlot. Together with our partner East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, we host live performances (music, dance, and singing) for the community and serve food. Preliminary funding for Friday Night Lights is provided by a Caltrans Clean California grant.
Pogo Park partners with First 5 Contra Costa and other local nonprofits to learn how to meet their children’s developmental needs. Caretakers of children ages 0-5 can drop by the park and join the Baby & Me program to learn how to play with their children and participate in activities designed to spark their babies’ hearts and minds to come alive.
Art Teacher Marie Kamali, a specialist in youth arts education, sets up her beloved art station Monday through Friday for three hours in the afternoon. She provides a myriad of ever-changing, hands-on creative art activities: painting, clay modeling, beading, cutting, gluing, pasting, making jewelry, and more.
Pogo Park provides a staffed resource station to connect children and their families to existing health support services. Many Iron Triangle residents have barriers to receive support services due to language differences and difficulties accessing materials or understanding how to sign up for services.
Shyaam Shabaka of EcoVillage Farm and Learning Center brings that organization’s gardening program to Elm Playlot, teaching children about the cycles of the earth and planting season, among other things. Gardener Richard Koenig additionally provides hands-on learning opportunities for children and youth to tend trees, plant plants, and grow fruits and vegetables in Elm Playlot’s garden.
Playworker Dr. Jane Perry creates opportunities for children to engage in supported, unstructured free play throughout the year. As a retired researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s Harold E. Jones Child Study Center, Dr. Perry is an expert in facilitating the kind of unstructured play that is critical to children’s cognitive, social, and creative development.