Oakdale Childcare Center Seeks Volunteers To Install New Playground Equipment

After more than 35 years of love, wear and tear from hundreds of children, Carol Mathey’s Center for Children and Families is embarking on the adventure of installing new playground equipment for their facility. 

The center will not be able to do it alone, and is seeking help from the community to complete the construction. 

Carol Mathey’s, which has been open since 1970, is a nonprofit organization that prides itself on making tuition affordable and available to families in need. 

“Since we are a nonprofit, we depend a lot on the help of businesses and the community to help everything we do run smoothly,” said Executive Director Stacie Penn.

Penn has been in search of help from the community to not only assemble the new unit, but to prepare the plot as well. 

In addition to assembling the playground equipment, volunteers are needed to clean, level and prep the facility’s backyard.

“We will need a total of about 100 volunteers to work a morning or afternoon shift between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.,” Penn said.

Penn said they also enlisted the help of local businesses for breakfast and lunch sponsors, which they have recently fulfilled. 

According to Penn, the playground will end up costing them a total of $29,000.  Of that total amount, the Lake Elmo Rotary donated $10,000 and $15,000 was awarded through a Let’s Play construction grant from Dr. Pepper, Snapple and KaBOOM! 

The remaining $4,000 was raised through various fundraising done by Carol Mathey’s.

“It took us a total of three years to raise the money, we couldn’t have done it without the generous help of the Rotary and the grant,” Penn said. 

The construction will take place on Saturday, Oct. 1.  Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Tracy Songe at 651-777-6688.