The problem: Getting kids to be physically active during the school day benefits their health and well-being. But public schools, pressed to improve short-term test scores, are often forced to prioritize instructional time over recess—a key opportunity for physical activity during the school day. The problem becomes magnified in low-income, urban neighborhoods where safety concerns further limit opportunities to play outside. Without the time and guidance needed to make it a time for safe and healthy play, recess has become a stressful and chaotic time for educators and a detraction from the school learning environment.

The proposal: Place trained, caring young adults in schools to create a consistent culture of play and build a national movement around the value of play for all children.

Grantee perspective: Some big ideas unfold gradually, revealing themselves over time to a receptive creator. Others come in an instant of recognition, an epiphany. For Jill Vialet, the founder of Playworks (formerly known as Sports4Kids), the concept for the program was a combination of the two—an epiphany moment some 12 years in the making.

To understand, go back to 1987. Vialet, with her newly inked Harvard diploma (she studied medical sociology) shunned the Wall Street route that many of her contemporaries took and headed for the wilds of Alaska and a job with Campfire Girls and Boys. "My job was to teach Eskimo kids how to swim in Alaska." With a fishing economy, cold water, high rates of parental alcoholism and no tradition of swimming, Alaskan youth have high rates of drowning. In addition to swimming, she taught art, sang songs and played sports with the kids. "I was a one-woman summer camp."

Moving from Alaska to the San Francisco Bay Area in California, and after a brief stint in socially responsible investment banking, Vialet founded the Museum of Children's Art (mocha). For the next nine years she brought art into the schools and lives of children, particularly those from ethnically and economically diverse backgrounds.

One day in 1996, working with mocha, Vialet was in a North Oakland school visiting Margaret Payton, the principal, who had just dispatched from her office two boys who had been fighting during recess. Frustrated by the recalcitrant repeat offenders, Payton declared to Vialet, "Recess is hell. Can't you do anything?"

In a flash, Vialet knew she could do something. She had grown up in Washington with both of her parents working on the Hill. "I remember playing at the Macomb Street Recreation Center and clearly recall Clarence, the recreation coordinator there who made sure that whatever game was going on, I got in the game and got to play." Based on that positive childhood experience, Vialet had the response to Payton's plea. "I could make it so that every kid had a Clarence," she says. And in that epiphany moment Playworks was launched.

"I had a sense then, being in schools, that kids did not know how to play. When I was a kid I lived for recess. There was a culture of older kids teaching younger ones the normative behavior around play—the rules of the game, picking teams, resolving disagreements. That's not happening today," she says.

"The classroom teacher has every social ill to solve, plus has to get test scores up in the short term." says Vialet. "So when kids do get to go out for recess, they don't have the same skills around play. It is much more likely to break down into chaos and fights. So there is a major disincentive for teachers and staff to bring kids out for recess."

Enter Playworks and a trained young person, called a coach, whose sole job is to make play an integral part of the school day and the learning environment. The coach organizes games, makes sure everyone gets to participate, teaches real-time conflict resolution, and, of course, gets kids moving.

"We are convinced that play is the single most effective way to promote physical activity, which is connected to a host of issues around well-being," says Vialet.

Play develops skills other than the obvious physical ones related to catching a ball or jumping rope. "When kids at play take responsibility for resolving their own conflicts or solving problems, those are real, tangible skills that are important for later, in the adult workplace," says Vialet. "Only the less-structured environment of play allows kids the opportunity to build those kinds of emotional muscles."

Focusing on the experience and quality of play is at the heart of what Playworks does. But there are other benefactors, too—the inspiring young coaches the program employs. "We train them and treat them with respect and give them the latitude to institute a program that reflects who they are. They go into these schools and are rock stars," she says. "They universally bring the love of play, the joy of working with kids and a commitment to making the community stronger."

RWJF perspective: With its five-year, $24-million grant, RWJF has made a substantial investment in the Playworks model, funding it to become a program with national importance.

"Playworks is a great model; it makes sense," says Nancy Barrand, RWJF special adviser for program development. "It reaches kids through what they like to do best, which is play—and play is absolutely essential to child development."

Growing an organization that started with 75 elementary and middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area of California into a national organization took some talent. After testing the model in four cities, the program now is expanding to a total of 27 cities, with Vialet at the helm as its visionary, not operational, leader.

"Jill realized that she can't be everything—CEO, president, marketer and bookkeeper. She is a strong social entrepreneur and visionary and that attracts a lot of high-level talent who want to be involved." says Barrand. "All the work and planning is in place for Playworks to create a public campaign to shift thinking about the ways children learn and how they spend their day at school."