Just as the design phase of a new playground begins in Washington, another is set to go up in a matter of hours in Belhaven Saturday.

Over 200 volunteers are set to get to work on the site of a KaBOOM! playground at the corner of Railroad and Bay streets in Belhaven, and they’re getting a little help from some professionals, according to Lisa Woolard, organizer of the KaBOOM! build. T.A. Loving Construction, out of Goldsboro, is sending down a crew to not only do all the prep work required for the job Thursday, but serve as team captains on build day.

“There’s a lot of younger guys in the company and their group has been wanting to find a service project, so this is it,” Woolard said. “So they’re coming with equipment and with expertise because this what they do for a living.”

T.A. Loving built both the new children’s hospital and stadium complex at East Carolina University in Greenville. But on prep day in Belhaven, the T.A. Loving crowd will be donating their time and energy to much smaller projects: digging holes for the equipment, cutting wood to spec for side projects like picnic tables and benches, building standing chalkboards and raised beds for mini-gardens at the Boys & Girls Club next door and constructing a handicap-accessible walkway from the existing sidewalk to the playground.

“They’re going to do all that preliminary work so that on Saturday those 200 people who come will be formed into teams and all they’ll have to do is put it together,” Woolard said.

The playground’s design, funding and building is the result of a group effort: that of KaBOOM! designers, partial funding from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and the work and volunteerism of Team Coalition, a consortium of Belhaven churches, Belhaven-Pantego Rotary, the town’s Chamber of Commerce and the Belhaven Alumni Association that have worked together to collect a workforce and raise their share of the playground’s cost. The playground is one of six going up in eastern North Carolina through the Trust’s Healthy Places NC, a long-term initiative aiming to improve the health of low-income, rural North Carolina counties over the next decade. Beaufort, Halifax and McDowell counties were the first three counties chosen to be part of the project.

When it comes to instilling healthy behaviors in the young ones, providing places for children to play is the first step, according to the KaBOOM! website. Since 1996, the organization has built, opened or improved over 15,000 playgrounds across the U.S. as part of its mission to create great places to play within walking distance of every child in America.

The playground to be built this week will provide that for more than 300 children in Belhaven and the surrounding areas, Woolard said.

While there are plenty of volunteers set to build on Saturday, Woolard said organizers will not turn down anyone who wants to help.

“We are always looking for people to come,” Woolard said. “The more people who show up, the earlier we’ll get through.”

The requirements for participation are simple: to work on the footprint of the playground, a volunteer over 18 years of age; anyone older than 15 can participate outside of the site by working on various side projects. Even the young ones aren’t excluded, Woolard said: activities for those 14 and younger will be provided at the Boys & Girls Club next door.

Volunteer registration is at 7:45 a.m. Saturday and building will start at 8:30 a.m.

Woolard said lunch — donated by local businesses and churches — will be provided for volunteers.

“We hope to have the ribbon cutting at 2:30 (p.m.). If we have enough volunteers we can get it done sooner,” Woolard said. “So we want everyone to come. There’s something for everybody to do.”

For more information, or to volunteer on Belhaven’s build day, contact Kris Bowen at 252-964-6568.