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PHILADELPHIA--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--More than 300 employee volunteers from PECO, The Lighthouse and KaBOOM! have teamed up to build a new community playground at The Lighthouse Field in the Juniata section of North Philadelphia.

"We are so grateful to PECO and KaBOOM! for helping to make this dream come true for our community. Now the real fun starts!"

Designed in July when local children put crayon to paper to draw their dream playground, the new play space includes several giant slides, a rock climbing wall, tic-tac-toe activity wall, ladders, swings and more. The new $95,000 playground, which was funded primarily by PECO, will provide more than 700 children in the Juniata community with a safe place to play.

aItas an amazing feat to take an athletic field and public park that previously had no playground equipment, and completely transform the space in less than a day,a said PECO President and CEO Craig Adams. aI am extremely proud of our employee volunteer support and the community partnership displayed today to construct a place for families to come together to have fun and enjoy quality time.a

As part of the construction, volunteers assembled the playground from start to finish in less than six hours. They mixed and poured thousands of pounds of concrete and moved enough safety surfacing to cover nearly 10 NBA-sized basketball courts.

This playground is the third built by KaBOOM! and PECO, and one of more than 125 planned by KaBOOM! In 2010, PECO and KaBOOM! constructed a playground in Chester, Delaware County, and in 2008 constructed a playground in Collegeville, Montgomery County in honor of a fallen lineman.

aKaBOOM! believes every child deserves to have a great place to play and weare excited to continue our work with PECO in moving toward that goal,a said Darell Hammond, KaBOOM! Founder & CEO. aThanks to the efforts of PECO and The Lighthouse, we moved one step closer to the KaBOOM! vision of a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.a

aThis playground represents a huge step in our campaign to promote safe and healthy lives for our children,a said John Lavery, Executive Director of The Lighthouse. aWe are so grateful to PECO and KaBOOM! for helping to make this dream come true for our community. Now the real fun starts!"

The Lighthouse

For more than a century the Lighthouse has provided the Kensington and North Philadelphia communities with educational, recreational and economic improvement programs to families and individuals to affect positive change and improve the quality of their lives. In response to the unique pressures that the families of North Philadelphia faced ranging from recent immigration to substance abuse, the Lighthouse began providing services to the children of our community through our educational and literacy; arts and music; and sports and recreational programming. As the needs of the community changed, the Lighthouse expanded its services to the elderly and under-employed in the community. The Lighthouse began the first Meals on Wheels program in the nation to feed the growing elderly population and was a pioneer in the Womenas Rights and Suffrage movement. The Lighthouse has always been driven by its commitment to the families of our community to be in the forefront in developing creative and cutting edge services to meet familiesa needs. Since 1893 the Lighthouse has been in the community, providing services to the community, because of support from the community.

PECO

Based in Philadelphia, PECO is an electric and natural gas utility subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC). PECO serves 1.6 million electric and 494,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and employs about 2,400 people in the region. PECO delivered 82.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 38.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2011. Founded in 1881, PECO is one of the Greater Philadelphia Region's most active corporate citizens, providing leadership, volunteer and financial support to numerous arts and culture, education, environmental, economic development and community programs and organizations.

KaBOOM!

KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to saving play. Children today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, a fact that is having disastrous consequences on their health, achievement levels, and overall well-being. To fight this play deficit, social entrepreneur Darell Hammond founded non-profit KaBOOM! in 1996 in Washington, D.C. with a vision of creating a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America. Since then, KaBOOM! has mapped over 89,000 places to play, built more than 2,100 playgrounds, and successfully advocated for play policies in hundreds of cities across the country. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., KaBOOM! also has offices in Chicago and San Mateo, Calif. For more information, visit [ www.kaboom.org ].