For our first challenge of the 2023-2024 program year, we partnered with the Detroit Parks Coalition (DPC), an alliance of organizations that supports healthy, equitable and vibrant parks through fundraising, collaboration and advocacy. Five teams of Fellows worked alongside the Detroit Parks Coalition staff, park coalition members and community stakeholders as they created deliverables focused on outreach and engagement for Detroit parks – learn more from the perspective of each team here!
“Remember that the young adults are the experts. Not us.”
Our team started every Friday meeting keeping the above statement in mind, as sometimes young adults are left behind when it comes to program planning and leadership. Young adults are the future and our key recommendations centered around their stories, experiences, and interactions with Detroit parks.
Garrett Dempsey from Detroit Outdoors shared his experience that, “Getting kids to parks early, makes it more likely they come back when they are young adults.” Looking at Clark Park’s robust youth activity programming, we see that children love attending parks, and younger children with parents are some of the most engaged population at parks. 13% of Detroiters are between the ages of 15-24, however less than 3% of this age group participated during DPC’s survey, making them the least engaged group with Detroit parks. So, we wanted to know: “How do we increase young adult attendance at Detroit Parks? Why is engagement currently low?”
Through intentional interviews with high school students, Rachel Perschetz from Clark Park, seven stakeholder organizations, and a survey with City Year AmeriCorps Members, we were able to gain insights regarding this question. We found that safety at parks is a concern, programs and activities catered to young adults could be strengthened, and social media is the best way to engage with young adults. With these insights we made three recommendations. First, we recommended creating a neighborhood watch program to keep an eye out on the parks. The knowledge that someone is watching will likely increase feelings of safety within the parks. Secondly we recommended creating a social media ambassador position for young adults. Using a young adult in this position increases the likelihood that more young adults will use the parks, considering they will know how to interact with their age group. Lastly, we recommended that both individual parks and DPC create a board for young adults to share their voice and perspectives on how to increase young adult engagement. This has been a great experience for our team, and we are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Detroit Parks Coalition and multiple stakeholders.
Blog by Fellow Team: Mary Zoran, Jessenia Cranfill, LaTasha Johnson, Gary Hopkins, Von Ellis, Erika Law
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