Mitch Traphagen Photos
Students at Doby Elementary School in Apollo Beach joined an estimated one million other students around the world for the Global Cardboard Challenge on Oct. 5, a day the founding organization has labeled the Global Day of Play.
The Cardboard Challenge is an event from a nonprofit organization launched after the enormous global response to the short film entitled, Caine’s Arcade, based on a real-life story. It all started when filmmaker Nirvan Mulluck needed a door handle for his car. He walked into a struggling auto parts store in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles. Inside the store, he found Caine’s Arcade, games made by the son of the store owner, nine-year-old Caine Monroy. Mullick became the boy’s first and only customer until Mullick created his film about the young man and his cardboard arcade. Since the release of the film, thousands of people have traveled to visit Caine’s Arcade. The nonprofit Imagination Foundation was launched to spread the generated creativity and goodwill to children across the nation and the globe.
Pamela Vasquez, a gifted students teacher at Doby Elementary, spearheaded the school’s participation in the project. More than a dozen children created games from cardboard boxes, displaying them on the playground for all of the students in the school to enjoy.
“The first annual Cardboard Challenge was last year and we’re joining it here at Doby for the first time because I wanted to encourage innovation and follow-through with ideas and creativity, and so far it looks great,” Vasquez said. “This is open to all students, it is a mixture of kids from all grades.”
The games were a collection of amazing creativity, imagination and in many cases, a great deal of hard work.
“They decided what they wanted to make,” Vasquez continued. “They were supposed to make them all by themselves and they have little prizes to give. They are also manning their games and explaining them to the kids.”
Left to run free, a child’s imagination is an amazing thing to see, particularly when it comes to fruition from a simple cardboard box. The Doby Elementary School Arcade was, to put it simply, incredible. Creativity, imagination, and the willingness to create something from virtually nothing are lessons well-suited for this young generation. Plus, it was a lot of fun to see and play the games.
The school joined an estimated 270 schools in 41 countries in the Cardboard Challenge.
For information about Doby Elementary, visit doby.mysdhc.org. For more information about the Imagination Foundation, visit www.imagination.is.
101013 Doby Cardboard Challenge – Images by Mitch Traphagen