City Council Hearing on Funding P4Pks: One Outreach Coordinator per Community Board

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Thanks to all who wrote in on behalf of Partnership for Parks! And Carol for also attending!

 

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City Council Hearing: Partnerships for Parks                                                                            November 16, 2016

 

…The Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition came to add our voice to the chorus of volunteer park stewards on behalf of Partnerships for Parks’ suggested goal of an Outreach Coordinator for every Community Board.

We are a long –time Park’s advocacy group. We’ve been together since 1980 when the neighborhood organized to rid our park of drug dealers and pimps.

Since then we have created 5 community gardens, maintained a bird sanctuary, a turtle pond, and a chicken coop. We’ve held ladybug and firefly releases annually. We’ve advocated for funding and held community visionings for sports fields, playgrounds and several park houses. We’ve held countless festivals (to honor our diverse community), held film screenings run by teenagers and Coalition meetings to gather the neighborhood’s input on our park. And together we are fighting for the return of a beloved nursing home.

With Partnerships for Parks help, whether financial, logistical or material, we’ve always felt we had a partner who cared about how we were doing. And not just us, but the entire city has been offered a personal relationship to their park through the dedication of individual Outreach Coordinators. In our case, Kirsty Bambridge is all you’d ever want in an ally. She’s sharp, diplomatic, direct and a hard worker. She listens to and honors the local smarts of all her park stewards. And she has a sense of humor. Vital. But it’s harder to keep that sense of humor if you are fraying because you can’t provide the level of contact required to keep volunteers going.

I recently attended one of P4Pks mentoring programs. I met and formed a fast friendship with one of the smartest organizers I’ve ever met. And I was supposed to be the mentor. But in P4Pks settings it is always an exchange of information, we are always learning from everyone.

In these coming times more than ever, we need to invest in advocates who know that they are not only helping people to value their parks, but helping people fight for the kind of society that values them.

Let’s invest in our future as we build an electorate that is willing to make common cause with everyone in their neighborhood, who will respond to problems with solutions, and who will stand up for their neighbors and those in need of help because they will feel entitled to do so and will have already been practicing in their local park.

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

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