Project Play Western New York Announces 2025 Summer Free Play Series Grantees
Buffalo, N.Y. – Project Play Western New York (WNY) announced that 17 organizations have received 2025 Summer Free Play Series grant awards totaling $77,000. The grants will provide summer programming for youth geared toward access to free play and sport sampling.
The Summer and Winter Free Play Series grants help provide Western New York youth opportunities to enjoy self-directed free play during school breaks, at no cost to families. Organizations that received grants are providing programming that best aligns with the mission of Project Play WNY, which is to work toward a community in which all children have the opportunity to be active through sports, regardless of zip code.
Each organization will offer a variety of programming, and dates vary by location. For example, Explore & More Children’s Museum will host lawn games, relay races and introductions to sports on Fridays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Canalside. For the Police Athletic League of Buffalo, the Summer Free Play grant will support its popular PlayStreets program, offering free outdoor sports clinics at parks throughout the city of Buffalo. Other locations may offer various sports, games, open gym, hiking, indoor skating and other non-instructional play.
You can learn about the specific Summer Free Play sites and programming at www.projectplaywny.org/summer-free-play.
The 2025 Summer Free Play Series grant recipients are:
A Better YOU Life style, Inc – $5,000
Azeem Family Foundation – $3,500
Boys & Girls Club of Northern Chautauqua County – $4,000
Buffalo Fine Arts Academy -- $3,500
Explore & More Children’s Museum – $2,000
H.E.A.L. International – $5,000
Jamestown Center City Development Corporation – $4,000
Lackawanna PBA – $6,000
Love Alive Fellow ship – $6,000
Lockport Ice Arena & Sports Center – $2,000
Metro Community Development Corporation -- $5,500
Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church – $5,000
Police Athletic League of Buffalo – $5,000
Resource Council of WNY, Inc. – $5,000
Rural Outreach Center – $3,500
Sensational Fun, Inc. -- $7,000
The Belle Center – $5,000
Reintroducing Free Play is one of eight strat egies, or “plays,” of Proj ect Play WNY, that seek to increase sport par ticipation among urban, suburban and rural youth in Western New York. This strategy fol lowed a comprehensive study about youth sports in the eight counties of Western New York titled, The State of Play: Western New York, com missioned by the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation in partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program.