It took several attempts and a huge amount of work by many in the MLT community but Cedar Way Elementary has been voted by the public to receive a $50,000 grant to build a new community playground.

Cedar Way has been working for five years raising money to replace an old, out of date and possibly unsafe playground. But with budget cutbacks and recession pressures, it has been difficult to raise the necessary funds to purchase expensive playground equipment.

Earlier this year, the Cedar Way PTO saw an opportunity in Pepsi’s Refresh Challenge. The idea for the Refresh Challenge is this: anyone can subit an idea for a grant and the public votes for which ideas should receive the grants. It is up to those who submit ideas to harness in as many votes as they can from their communities.

December was the 3rd month that Cedar Way was up for voting and the Mountlake Terrace community really banded together to win this grant for Cedar Way:

We are incredibly grateful for all of the support we received from the MLT City Manager and Council, Mountlake Terrace High School administration and parent groups and students, local MLT businesses including Red Onion Burgers, Double D Meats, Sorelli’s pizza and Seattle Tae Kwan Do. MLTnews was very supportive and really helped to get the word out. We had a lot of parent organizers who really went the extra mile as well.

-Molly Luna, Cedar Way PTO Co-President

What now? Cedar Way has to do some paperwork and go through a verification process but should hopefully receive a disbursement later this month.

As well as winning this grant, the Edmonds School District has agreed to partially match the winning funds. The Pepsi funds must be spent within a year so Cedar Way is hoping to construct much of the new playground this summer.

“I feel it is very relieved that we’ve completed the contest and very excited for the next step in our journey to create a new playspace for the kids and the community,” said Molly Luna.

MLTnews gave away two $20 gift cards to Double DD Meats to those who commented on this post promising to vote every day. The winners of the gift cards are Linda Lynch and Patrick Jones.

Thank you everyone for enduring our constant posting about Cedar Way and voting to help them get this grant. It was truly a community effort.

(Image: 205of365[NTR23], a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from ntr23’s photostream)