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Super Awesome Active Birthday Parties

Providing NYCHA child residents and the greater community with the opportunity to celebrate their birthdays with outdoor play, delicious cupcakes, and healthy snacks in East Harlem at Mad Fun Farm and Jefferson Houses.

Leader

Mac Levine

Location

98th Street and Third Avenue New York, NY 10029

About the project

Our motto is: “It’s a Party! Celebrate life by surrounding ourselves with good friends, family, physical activity, and a healthy, well-balanced diet.” Together with our partners, including New York Common Pantry and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Concrete Safaris aims to bring fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and water to the party (along with the birthday cupcakes, of course), all while getting kids moving in a celebration of life. We believe that when healthy lifestyles are framed in this way, the intervention will be packaged in a format that families will be asking for! New York City children’s birthday parties can be difficult for families to pull off due to space constraints and prohibitive costs: the average party for 15-20 children can range from $500 to well over $1000. Our vision is to provide affordable, healthy birthday parties for all families, the costs of which will range from free to scaled based on a family’s ability to pay. 

The Steps

Creating and distributing flyers in East Harlem residential buildings, passing out promo cards at neighborhood events, spreading the word on social media.
 
Creating a birthday party menu and working with partners to ensure high quality ingredients.
Securing supplies for the birthday parties.
 
Distributing invitations to individual guest lists.
 
Hosting the birthday parties and making the days very special.

Why we‘re doing it

Birthday parties can be prohibitively expensive, a lot of work for an already overworked parent or family, and full of junk foods. Concrete Safaris wants to make healthy birthdays possible for children with a very minimal amount of work and money for low-income families. Schedule the big day, show up, and we provide everything — high-quality staff, activities, healthy food, and birthday cupcakes.

$1,682.00 / $1,682.00