Connecting New York City's Immigrants With Parks

"The Collaborative’s ten community-based organizations are working to increase immigrant engagement in eight parks in New York City. Most have a dedicated staff person, funded by the grant, who carries out the day-to-day work in each park, such as planning programs and conducting neighborhood outreach. The Collaborative works to understand issues unique to local context, while identifying systemic barriers to immigrant access and participation. The aim is to use lessons from this privately funded project to inform the Parks Department’s and other organizations’ efforts to foster more inclusive park engagement.

Two cases exemplify these efforts. In Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, two of the Collaborative’s constituent organizations, the Hester Street Collaborative (HSC) and Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), teamed up to create and employ a more accessible public input process for the redesign of a city-owned playground. In Jackson Heights, Friends of Travers Park approached the Queens Community House (QCH) to partner in efforts to increase immigrant representation in Travers Park activities and programs."