Major Bank of America Grant Enhances PP&R's Mobile Lunch + Play Program

The Portland Parks Foundation and Portland Parks & Recreation are pleased to announce that they have received a $200k Neighborhood Builders grant from Bank of America. The two-year grant ($100,000 each year) will significantly expand free summertime lunch and recreation activities in east Portland, the region of the city most in need of those services.

Portland Parks Foundation and Portland Parks & Recreation staff, including PPF Executive Director Randy Gragg (black sweater), PP&R Director Adena Long (center) accepted the grant with Parks Commissioner Nick Fish (checkered shirt). The Bank of America grant will allow the Bureau's Mobile Lunch + Play program to expand significantly.

The BofA grant will greatly expand Portland Parks & Recreation’s (PP&R) Summer Free For All Mobile Lunch + Play program. In partnership with Meals on Wheels People, Mobile Lunch + Play brings free summertime lunch, sports, arts, crafts, and games to apartment complexes and sites in Portland where parks are currently scarce. Meals on Wheels People was the recipient of the Neighborhood Builders grant last year. 

“Thanks to Bank of America, thousands more Portland children will receive a free, healthy meal,” says Portland Parks Commissioner Nick Fish. “The Neighborhood Builders grant strengthens our longstanding partnership with Bank of America. Thanks to our philanthropic partner – the Portland Parks Foundation, and to Roger Hinshaw and Monique Barton at Bank of America for their commitment to Portland families.” 

“We recognize the critical role that local nonprofits play to build pathways to economic progress in the Portland community. Through Neighborhood Builders, we connect nonprofits like Financial Beginnings Oregon and the Portland Parks Foundation to the funding and leadership development resources they need to further scale their impact,” said Roger Hinshaw, Bank of America’s Market President in Oregon and Southwest Washington. “Both of these nonprofits do extraordinary work, so I am pleased we are able to bring forward this additional support at a particularly strategic time for them.” 

Nearly forty percent of east Portland households still lack a park within a half mile of their homes. Density continues to grow in east Portland with an estimated 25,000 more housing units coming by 2035. Bank of America’s support will allow PP&R and PPF to expand the Mobile Lunch + Play program to reach more kids and families in need, and bring fun and games to areas without easy park access. 

A Mobile Lunch + Play event brings smiles to kids at an east Portland apartment complex. The Portland Parks & Recreation program brings free lunches and the summertime park experience - games, sports, arts and crafts - to areas which don't yet have ready access to parks.

“The Bank of America Neighborhood Builders grant will allow us to bring a lot of the fun of a park directly to the kids,” says Randy Gragg, PPF’s Executive Director. “With our city growing so quickly, Mobile Play + Lunch is a fast, effective way to better serve more of our city’s kids.” 

“We are so thankful to Bank of America,” says Portland Parks & Recreation Director Adena Long. “The grant helps our Free Lunch + Play program grow in size and scope; to deliver the summertime experience every Portland child deserves.” 

For more information on Portland Parks & Recreation’s Mobile Lunch + Play and other Summer Free For All programs, please click here. 

For more information on Bank Of America’s Neighborhood Builders grant, click here. 

We Did It

When we dreamed of a big celebration for the bridge connecting the iconic Wildwood Trail over West Burnside, we wondered if anyone would actually come—it would probably rain, planning it would be complicated, and we would need so many permits. 

Well nearly 1,300 of us showed up to celebrate the opening of the Barbara Walker Crossing last Sunday. Under sunny skies, the Grand Ronde Color Guard and BrassRoots Movement led hundreds of us up West Burnside, a half-mile to the bridge; kids and adults tested their speed in a 100-meter dash organized by Foot Traffic; we witnessed the bridge’s blessing by leaders of the Siletz and Grand Ronde tribes; Bodyvox and Michael Curry Design performed an enchanting “ribbon tying”, symbolizing the joining of Washington and Forest parks; speakers from the City of Portland and the U.S. House of Representatives acknowledged our community for the groundswell of energy now memorialized in a new safe crossing for one of Portland’s crown jewel’s: the Wildwood Trail. 

And best of all, we stepped onto the bridge we’ve all been dreaming about for more than 20 years! 
 The Barbara Walker Crossing has been a dream for decades.

It moved from dream to drawing board in 2012 when architect Andrew Wheeler and artist Ed Carpenter began lobbying.

In 2014, the Portland Parks Foundation adopted the project and partnered with Portland Parks & Recreation, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Metro, and hundreds of Portlanders to bring the bridge to life.

Companies like KPFF, R&H Construction, Walker Macy, and Shiels Obletz Johnson all played important roles, donating hundreds of hours of work for the design, engineering, construction, and installation of this bridge. 

Contributions from foundations, businesses, and hundreds of donors made all of this possible. If you were one of them: thank you!

Now get out there, get in touch with nature, and enjoy that bridge!

See photos from Sunday's event here. 

See media coverage here:
KGW
KPTV
KOIN
Portland Tribune

The Oregonian

Oasis of Hope: Casey Sclar on American Public Gardens in an Era of Radical Change

Speaker:          Dr. Casey Sclar, Executive Director of American Public Gardens Association

Date:               Monday, November 4

Time:              6:30 pm

Place:              The Armory, 128 N.W. 11th Avenue, Portland

Tickets:           $5-20 sliding scale; tickets at Eventbrite

Casey Sclar, Executive Director of the American Public Gardens Association, will explore the urgent and evolving role public gardens must play in knitting the social fabric of our communities and addressing global challenges.

Can our public gardens preserve threatened plant species as the climate changes? Can they be places of beauty and psychological health that are more inviting to communities our public gardens have not typically engaged? Can public gardens transition from traditional ornamental collections to becoming critical societal infrastructure?

"There is an urgent new role public gardens can play," says Sclar. "We must get it right."  

Dr. Casey Sclar is the Executive Director of the American Public Gardens Association (APGA). APGA connects, protects, and champions over 600 public gardens and 9300 individual members throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and 24 other countries. These gardens reach over 121 million visitors per year, continually envisioning “a world where public gardens are indispensable.”

Casey’s work experience in horticulture and plant science spans three decades. He spent 15 years at Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA) directing integrated pest management, soils and composting, land stewardship, and other sustainability programs. That work earned him APGA’s Professional Citation in 2011 for outstanding achievements in public horticulture.  He is the Inaugural Chair of NICH - the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture - which raises overall awareness of the $196B/yr. end-use horticulture industry, serves on the Board of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and sits on the Advisory Council for Seed Your Future to help more leaders pursue horticulture and the plant sciences as a career. He holds a B.S. degree in horticulture from Cal Poly State Univ., San Luis Obispo, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in entomology from Colorado State University.

New grants projects connect underserved communities with local parks and programs

Portland Parks Foundation is pleased to announce the new grantees from our Small Grants Program, which provides capacity building support for organizations whose work aligns with PPF’s mission to ensure a thriving and accessible parks system for a healthy Portland. “We are excited to work with our new grantees, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO)  and Ecology in Classrooms and Outdoors (ECO). These projects directly address PPF’s priority for supporting underserved communities that have barriers to accessing the benefits of local parks and programs,” said Jessica Green, PPF’s Operations Officer.

IRCO’s Slavic Youth and Families Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Community School Program at Gilbert Park Elementary.

IRCO is nationally and locally recognized as a culturally and linguistically specific community-based organization with a deep understanding of the diverse communities residing in Oregon. Their proposed project supports Portland’s Slavic Community, Oregon’s largest refugee-based community, which includes diverse ethnicities such as Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, and Czech. “After experiencing religious and political persecution, conflict, and corruption, Slavs are often isolated and reticent to mainstream systems. Almost one in three Slavic children live in poverty, twice the rate of White children. One in five Slavs speak English less than well. These disparities represent significant obstacles for Slavic families seeking resources through PP&R,” IRCO wrote. Through this project, IRCO will provide opportunities to engage Slavic community members with Portland parks spaces and programs through information sharing and events. IRCO hopes to not only increase Slavs’ access to parks, but also help “provide the sense of belonging that Portland’s public spaces, and by extension the city itself, is ‘for them.’”

Students participating in an ECO program at Kingsley D. Bundy Park in SE Portland.

With a mission to reconnect kids with nature, ECO shared that their work “is rooted in the understanding that when kids enjoy and understand the natural world, they grow into adults who take value and take care of it.” Eighty percent of the students ECO serves qualify for free or reduced lunch and 63% identify as minority. City parks that ECO students engage with include Powell Butte Natural Area, Springwater Corridor, and Kingsley D. Bundy Park. The proposed project is to provide diversity, equity, and inclusion training for ECO’s staff and board, with the goal of increasing capacity for the organization to deliver equitable and culturally responsive ecology programs. With increased capacity, ECO sees the impact of this program as helping to build “a more inclusive and diverse next generation of Portland residents who value and support access to thriving parks and natural areas.”

Congratulations to IRCO and ECO!

If you’re with a public park friends group or another community partner, be sure to keep in touch with the PPF throughout the year. You can learn more about our Small Grants Program here. Our next round of applications will be open beginning March 1, with a deadline of March 30, 2019. In addition to small grants, we also offer seasonal technical assistance workshops. Past programs have focused on fundraising strategies, equity and inclusion, grant writing, and building your board.

Portland Parks Foundation welcomes new Executive Director Randy Gragg

Portland Parks Foundation (PPF) welcomes Randy Gragg as the new Executive Director. Gragg succeeds Jeff Anderson who recently retired from the role. Bringing a dynamic background in journalism, urban planning, and advocacy, Gragg will lead the organization that serves as the chief philanthropic partner for the City of Portland’s Parks & Recreation.

For nearly 30 years, Gragg has helped to shape conversations about the city of Portland’s spaces and culture. His leadership and advocacy has helped champion a number of public parks projects, including Eastbank Esplanade, Pioneer Courthouse Square, and Lawrence Halprin’s Portland Open Space Sequence, also known as Lovejoy Fountain, Pettyrove Park, and Keller Fountain.

“The Portland Parks Foundation is proud of the impacts we've made on Portland’s Parks system, most recently the Barbara Walker Footbridge over Burnside, opening next summer,” said Mary Ruble, the foundation’s Board Chair. ”With Randy Gragg at the helm of the Foundation, our goal is to increase our visibility and expand our range of public/private partnerships to build a stronger and more vibrant parks and recreation system throughout Portland. We are honored to have Randy join us, and look to his vision and experience to take us to new heights.“

As a journalist, Gragg served as Editor-in-Chief at Portland Monthly Magazine from 2009-2013 and as a columnist and reporter at the Oregonian for 17 years. More recently he has developed exhibitions and public programs with Design Week Portland. From 2013-2017, Gragg was the Executive Director of the University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape where he developed a major 2017 retrospective for the Portland Art Museum on the seminal Oregon architect and landscape designer John Yeon.

“Portland is entering an exciting era,” Gragg said. “The city is growing dramatically, not just in numbers, but with deepening cultural diversity, creativity, and awareness. With the Parks Foundation’s 16-year legacy of good work to build on, we’re ready to partner with Portland’s wide-ranging communities to create new parks and programs, refresh those we have, even rethink what a park is and where it can be.”

Gragg was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and an inaugural National Arts Journalism Fellow at Columbia University. His volunteer affiliations include roles as a board member with Pioneer Courthouse Square and the Alumni Council Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University. As board chair of the Halprin Landscape Conservancy, he co-led the development of an innovative $4.5-million public/private partnership to restore Halprin’s world-renowned fountain plazas.

Portland Parks & Recreation recently came under the leadership of City Commissioner Nick Fish, who will also be the Foundation’s City Council liaison. “Randy is a respected community leader and will bring a strong vision during this time of growth for the Portland Parks Foundation,” said Portland Parks Commissioner Nick Fish. “I look forward to building on our longstanding partnership and expanding Portland’s world-class parks and recreation system.”

About Portland Parks Foundation

The Portland Parks Foundation is devoted to building a thriving and accessible parks system for a healthy, sustainable, and creative Portland. We are the chief philanthropic partner for Portland Parks & Recreation. Through leadership, partnership, and philanthropy, we advance the City of Portland’s commitment to excellence, equity, inclusion, and good stewardship of our public parks. PPF will soon complete the Barbara Walker Footbridge over Burnside.  We have played key roles in the creation of Cully Park, Director Park, the Bill Naito Legacy Fountain, the Gateway Green Master Plan, and the Dawson Park interactive fountain. PPF also provides technical assistance and financial support to parks affiliates and friends groups.

Photo courtesy of Sabina Poole.

‘Parks Champions’ are working to create more vital, inclusive public parks

At Portland Parks Foundation, we are so pleased to honor Matthieu Kambumba and Ginger Edwards as the 2018 Parks Champions award winners. This annual award recognizes outstanding park, community center, natural area, or community garden volunteers. Honorees also get to designate a Portland Parks Foundation grant of $1,500 to a community organization that aligns with the Foundation’s goal to create a thriving and accessible parks system for a healthy Portland.

Matthieu Kambumba is a leader in Portland’s Congolese community and an Oregon Food Bank Ambassador. He has been integral in activating the new Wood Community Garden in SE Portland’s Centennial neighborhood. His contributions include community outreach, culturally responsive gardening classes, and securing of grants. Matthieu has designated a grant to support Wood Community Garden, noting that it means “more opportunities and resources for the Wood community to achieve [our] goal to be self sufficient and sustainable. It is the opportunity to have more time together to build and strengthen the community."

An advocate for North Portland parks and neighborhoods, Ginger Edwards has been especially active with Arbor Lodge Park. She organizes community groups and businesses to volunteer throughout the year, is part of the tree team, and helped to fund and personally maintained an ADA accessible restroom at the park’s popular and inclusive Harper’s Playground. She said, "if you do things for the right reasons, and share your goals, other like minded people will show up and join you. That is what has happened at Arbor Lodge Park and Harper's Playground. This shows that something close to me and important in our neighborhood resonates with others outside of our neighborhood." Ginger also works as Ginger has designated her grant to support Arbor Lodge Neighborhood Association.

Congrats Matthieu and Ginger and thank you for all you are doing to support thriving, inclusive Portland parks!

The impact of partnership: a farewell from Jeff Anderson

As I retire from the Portland Parks Foundation at the end of October, I want to share just a few thoughts about the impact of partnership in fulfilling our mission.  

We do nothing alone.  In America there’s a persistent myth of the impact of the rugged individualist.  I’m not sure whose interest this myth serves, but the truth is that ALL of our enterprises depend upon continuity, collaboration, cooperation, and community.  Even the world’s greatest innovators in science and art, or leaders in commerce and politics, acknowledge that they “stand on the shoulders of giants.”  Partnership works across time as well as tasks.   

In three years at the Portland Parks Foundation I’ve been privileged to work with selfless community volunteers on our board, on our Footbridge campaign, and among many park Friends organizations, as well as dedicated staff at the Foundation and at PP&R.  They are the greatest strength of our city—people dedicating their time and expertise to public good—and in the case of volunteers, they do it for free.  They are leaders not because they command but because they serve.

When leadership is rooted in service, partnership is a natural consequence.  We don’t go it alone.  Partners look not to compete but to complement each other’s strengths.  And, as the saying goes, partners’ “many hands” are what makes “light work.”  We get a lot farther with less effort rowing together in the same canoe than by taking on the current by ourselves.  And we owe a lot to those who built the canoe.

The Portland Parks Foundation was literally founded on the concept of partnership.  Perhaps even more now than at PPF’s inception in 2001, partnership is important to help preserve and improve the public spaces that Portlanders prize as highly as any other city service.  Even as we expect clean water to run from our faucets, or our streets to be maintained, or our neighborhoods to be safe, we expect to go to the park.  And we do just that—tens thousands of us every day—because public parks are an essential feature of the city we know and love.  They are magnets drawing others to live here.  Every Portlander has the right to be on our common ground, under the sky and trees, away from the traffic and the noise, in a place that we share as a community. 

From Forest Park to Gateway Green, it has always been a combination of private and public partnership that made this possible.  Look at what Verde has accomplished with public and private partners in Cully Park.  Look at the lively plaza downtown that is Director Park.  Visit Southeast Portland’s upgraded Sellwood Park, or the stunning Peninsula Park Rose Garden in north Portland.  These special places stem from partnership.  Reflect on a concert or sporting event or movie you saw in a park this past summer.  Hundreds of partners create Summer Free For All.  And next summer we’ll have a virtual public art installation in the erection of the Barbara Walker Footbridge, spanning west Burnside to provide safe passage along the Wildwood Trail—the latest of the Parks Foundation’s major efforts, with nearly 1,000 private donors contributing $2 million.

Successful partnership will continue to derive from leaders who serve.  Whether it’s the PP&R staff giving their best, or the community volunteers who spend evenings and weekends with their hands in the soil, or the fundraisers and private donors who give time and treasure to parks, we must complement each other’s work, remember our debt to those who have gone before, and our responsibility to those who will be here when we’re gone.  The Portland Parks Foundation seeks to make and keep these connections, and to keep Portlanders close to nature.  If our connection to each other and to nature is broken, Portland may as well be just anywhere, or nowhere.  But as long as we are here together, and we work together, we’ll be somewhere special.  Thanks for making it so.