by Eli Dickerson, Park Pride’s Director of Education
Six months ago, I joined the Park Pride team as the organization’s first ever Director of Education. It has been an exciting time of growth, for the organization and for me personally. Below, I reflect on why I am excited to have joined this team that has been low-key making a huge impact in Atlanta for decades.
Connecting to Park Pride
Nearly my entire career has been spent working for nonprofits. A quick Google search led me to a definition of a nonprofit: A nonprofit organization… is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit… (Wikipedia)
But who determines what a “public or social benefit” is for any specific group of people? Sure, there are some universal ideas of ways to support each other that we can refer to—think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, shelter, safety, etc. But when it comes to addressing particular needs of the public, the most successful efforts are rooted in people and engagement with communities. It requires a bottom-up approach to be successful long-term, not a top-down approach. Let the community voice their needs, and together we can find a way forward.
Park Pride gets this right, meeting people where they are and using decades of experience and expertise to support communities through the creation of great parks that meet their unique needs. Our mission is explicitly to engage communities to activate the power of parks, and in my six months on staff, I can confirm that this is exactly what we do.
Further, Park Pride’s approach to park improvements and community capacity building is intentional in creating opportunities for all members of a community to share their voices and be heard. To receive a grant, participate in park visioning, or host a volunteer project, for example, there must be robust community engagement, support, and buy-in for the proposed park project to move forward. In fact, I’m excited to share that a large focus of the Park Stewardship Academy (which will kick-off with its first class this fall), will be on outreach and community building skills, and learning community engagement techniques that can be used in future park projects (or projects that extend beyond the boundaries of the park to advance other aspects of “public or social benefit”).
Stepping Into My Potential
I’ve been deeply involved in the environmental nonprofit world in Atlanta since arriving in summer of 2005—nature and connecting people to their environment is something I care deeply about.
Most of my career has been focused on learning from, teaching about, and stewarding the old-growth Fernbank Forest in Northeast Atlanta. I’ve had the great honor of being the volunteer steward of Trees Atlanta’s Champion Tree Program (and the even bigger honor of leading the late civil rights hero, John Lewis, on a champion tree walk in a local greenspace). I’ve served at multiple nonprofits, sat on the board of the Environmental Education Alliance of Georgia, led volunteer efforts, run an environmental summer camp, and more.
I’ve made wonderful connections with individuals, communities, and countless nonprofits, universities, and students. But, within my previous roles, I’ve struggled to fully leverage my knowledge, connections, and passion to maximize my effectiveness in connecting people to nature, and people to people through the environment.
Now, however, I can confidently say that as the Director of Education at Park Pride, I’m starting to see this goal manifest. Park Pride is building and strengthening communities around parks and around nature. I am finally stepping into the full level of my potential of being both a teacher and a connector for park users across Atlanta and DeKalb County.
From Inspiration to Action
I’m going to end this column straight from the heart. At Park Pride, I’m surrounded by a staff, board, funders, partners, interns, volunteers and community members who all have one thing in common: love for parks. I intend to be a force of good, letting our common love of parks lead the way for our future efforts and initiatives across Atlanta and DeKalb. Educating on the wonder and importance of anything leads to loving it.
In my role as Director of Education, I intend to both capitalize on the existing love for parks and greenspaces, but also help facilitate better understanding to help protect, preserve, improve and activate parks and greenspaces for everyone. And I promise we will have a lot of fun along the way.
Join me, won’t you?
Learn more about the Park Stewardship Academy at parkpride.org/psa.
