About

Alex was adopted by his parents, Dwight and Jenny Griffith when he was 11 months old. Alex is one of 5 children the Griffiths adopted, the only one they adopted internationally. The Griffiths worked with the Cradle of Hope Adoption Center to bring Alex home when they saw his picture on a flyer of waiting children with special needs. Alex was being cared for in a hospital where he was born prematurely, weighing less than 2 pounds and was malnourished, had rickets, and was diagnosed with mild celebral palsy.

Alex is now 15 years old and is a freshman at North Harford High School. In addition to scouting, Alex enjoys biking, skateboarding and playing his DS games. Recently, Alex read a journal that his father had written detailing their experience while traveling to Russia to adopt him in 1994. The journal mentioned a playground at Hospital # 20 in a state of utter disrepair. The playground had one rusty swing with a rotten wooden seat, a sandbox mostly covered in dirt and mud, and a small gazebo with a picnic table.

Alex thought the playground was unsafe and decided he wanted to build a new playground so that the children of Krasnoyarsk could have a safe, fun place to play. At the time Alex was reading this journal he was also brainstorming ideas for his Boy Scout Eagle Project. An Eagle Project is a service project helpful to any religious institution, school or community and Alex decided he wanted to provide service to his birth home in Russia by building a new playground.

He then spent 6 months doing research and planning for the project, and in January 2008, he made a presentation Mike Balog, the Boy Scout Harford District Advancement committee member responsible for approving Eagle projects, who gave his approval.

As part of the Eagle project, Alex will be leading other scouts and members of the community. His responsibilities include designing and purchasing the new playground, coordinating fundraising, creating a installation instruction and procedure manual written in both English and Russian, performing a quality check and preassembling of the playground, and then crating and shipping the playground to Russia.

With the help of the Playworld Systems playground company, Alex designed a new playground to be used by patients of Hospital #20, their families, and neighborhood children. The playground is designed for children ages 5-12, is ADA accessible, and has 20 components, including a double bay belt swing, a curved rock wall, crazy bone bridge, and multiple climbers and slides. The playground will be red, white and blue – the colors of both the Russian and American flags.