It might seem like an unusual pairing at first glance — a charity golf tournament put on by a big-name pro golfer in Florida is making a huge donation to a playground safety program based at the University of Northern Iowa. Donna Thompson is executive director of the National Program for Playground Safety in Cedar Falls.
The Stryker Orthopedic Corporation does operations like replacements and Jack Nicholas had a hip replacement so he’s their spokesman. Nicholas’ home course, The Bear’s Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, hosted the Stryker Charity Golf Tournament earlier this month. Thompson went to Florida for the event on December 12th and brought home a big check.
Thompson says the 100-thousand dollars will be used to continue to educate people about proper supervision on the playground, having age-appropriate equipment, 12-inches of fall surfacing under the equipment and to make sure the equipment is well maintained. She says the N-P-P-S was founded a decade ago at U-N-I with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Injury Prevention.
She says our major purpose is to raise awareness of playground safety nationwide. They put out all sorts of booklets and have a website, “playgroundsafety.org”. Thompson says more than 200-thousand children are injured on playgrounds every year.