Officials seek ‘friends’ to help city’s parks

(Published February 24, 2003)

 

By ANDREW MOISAN

Staff Writer

As more D.C. budget cuts loom, the Department of Parks and Recreation is striving to garner more support from citizens and community groups in efforts to improve recreation centers across the city.

Through a series of community meetings, the department aims to encourage citizens and community groups in every ward to get involved in programs dedicated to bettering local recreational facilities. The meetings will include a workshop, scheduled for late March, entitled “Building A Better Parks System Through Partnerships for Our Parks and Recreation Centers.”

Programs embracing the department’s efforts include “Friends of,” “Volunteers and Action,” “One-Day Cleanups” and “Adopt-A-Park,” all of which share an interest in improving recreational facilities and are active throughout the city, said Sean Gough, community affairs manager for the department.

Gough attributed the urgency of the upcoming community meetings and workshops to impending budget cuts in the District.

“It’s imperative now more than ever to push for more citizen involvement,” Gough said.

In addition to galvanizing the interests if citizens, the department also is considering how to “go about tapping into the youth in the city,” to get them involved with civic issues, Gough said.

Attracting young people was one of the things the department failed to do in 1998, when the department last held a similar workshop, Gough said.

The department will also pay close attention to relating its strategies to citizens in every ward -- another area in which Gough suggested the department could have done better in 1998.

Such strategies will include “How to Establish a ‘Friends of’ Group,” “Landscaping Standards: What Plant Life Works for Our City,” “Recruiting, Managing and Retaining Volunteers” and “Basic Fund-raising Strategies.”

Fund-raising, Gough said, is a different process in more affluent wards than in those that suffer economically. To that end, a major focus of the ensuing workshops will be to bridge these gaps among wards, giving citizens throughout the city the “tools to build a nice, tight-knit network,” he said.

Further, Gough said the department will focus on reaching out to members of the clergy, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and civic associations.

“Since they’re already in the trenches of their neighborhoods,” Gough said, they could help the department with its outreach.

“Community partnerships are key to the success of this agency,” Parks and Recreation Director Neil Albert said in a statement. “They donate their time and talent.”

Evelyn Woolston, chairman of the Recreation Assistance Board, one of three organizations co-sponsoring the department in its efforts, said she has seen the upshot of what a local “Friends of” group has done for the Guy Mason Recreation Center at Calvert Street and Wisconsin Avenue NW.

Having seen the center acquire a fragrance garden, increased lighting for its ballpark and a new playground, Woolston said she eagerly anticipates continued improvements, which she hopes the department’s upcoming string of community workshops will inspire.

“I think everyone could find something interesting to bring back with them,” she said of the meetings.

Woolston agreed that city budget cuts are a formidable concern and questioned why community workshops are not held more often.

“Why they cut our budget, I don’t know,” she said.

Still, Woolston remains optimistic about the workshop slated for late March, offering a preliminary if shaky estimate of how many might turn out.

“We’re praying for a hundred or more,” she said.

 

Copyright 2003, The Common Denominator