11/24/2022
Both the Kindness Duck Project (KDP) and Building Wishes are excited to announce the approval of first steps in the Uvalde Memorial Park Project by Uvalde’s City Council Tuesday evening. Operating out of the Fort Worth/North Texas area, both organizations continue to expand their scope of building a better future for others through kindness.
Raised in Uvalde, Kyle Wagner, Executor Director of KDP, has seen the Uvalde community persevere through thick and thin. However, the May 24, 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School “...was and still is a different level,” says Wagner. “This is a pain no one should endure, and many families' lives have been changed forever.” KDP started a fundraiser the evening of May 24th to raise money to send to hospitals directly to help pay for Robb-related medical bills. When the opportunity to team up with Building Wishes arose, KDP jumped at the opportunity to create a project that would simultaneously honor the victims and their families, while giving the entire community a shining light in darker times. “What the people, community, and families need right now is love. Love. Care. Kindness. Anything. Everything,” says Wagner. Tuesday evening, the City Council granted Building Wishes and KDP the opportunity to move forward with surveying and preliminary engineering work so that they can work toward providing those very things.
Originally known as ‘The Grove,’ Uvalde Memorial Park sits on roughly ten acres of city property. Officially renamed and dedicated on November 11, 1927, Uvalde Memorial Park has seen numerous additions and alterations, though the greater park area’s significance and usage in downtown Uvalde simultaneously has waned over time. Building Wishes and KDP hope to uniquely honor the victims of the Robb tragedy as ‘pillars of the community’ while creating a bridge to a path forward for Uvalde by providing a large, diverse, and inclusive area for the community to gather, play, celebrate, and remember.
“Building Wishes is beyond honored and excited to be a part of the Uvalde Memorial Park redesign and construction,” says Brian Grossman, Executive Director of Building Wishes. “We truly believe this park will be a light in the community and a place that families, citizens, and visitors can build memories for decades to come.” Building Wishes and KDP hope that Uvalde Memorial Park will be a place to promote light and life through play and gathering, learning and art, in the past, present, and future. “Kindness is the agenda. Nothing else,” says Wagner. “We have teamed up with strategic nonprofit partners, such as A Memory Grows, to help us carry out this expansive, yet delicate, vision. Now, we are asking others – foundations, nonprofits, corporations, groups, families, even individuals – to join us in giving Uvalde something to bridge the past, present, and future together.”
