An Open Online Community for People Who Love Parks
A spotlight on Parkology, a 2018 Global Sprint project
Natalie Garcia (@garciajnatalie) is a Senior Web Content Editor and Jeffrey Keefer (@JeffreyKeefer) is the Director of Training & Knowledge Management at The Trust for Public Land. Natalie and Jeffrey were selected to join our current round of Mozilla Open Leaders for their work on Parkology: An Open Online Community for People Who Love Parks.
I interviewed Natalie & Jeffrey to learn more about Parkology and how you can help at the Mozilla’s Global Sprint 2018.
What is Parkology?
Parkology is a free, public, online platform where park advocates can share ideas, tools, and resources and was created in partnership by City Parks Alliance, National Recreation and Park Association, and The Trust for Public Land. It is designed to empower passionate people across America to help further the 10-minute walk vision by advocating for the creation of quality, close-to-home parks.
Why did you start Parkology?
We believe that everyone deserves a park within a 10-minute walk of home. Parkology is one tool created to advance the 10-minute walk vision. We know that barriers exist in the ability for people to advocate for local parks. These include lack of knowledge, limits to resources, and the inability to collaborate and share best practices with other park advocates in the community. Park professionals already have their own communities, networks, and access to resources, though local grassroots members of the community do not have these resources currently available in a free, central, and open location.
How has your platform helped communities advocate for more and better parks?
Parkology links to existing information from leaders in parks and recreation. It also allows users to build on knowledge by sharing their own experiences and connecting directly to each other. This is the first national community platform to openly connect park advocates and it is our hope this will increase opportunities for community advocacy for park creation and stewardship.
How will working openly help you reach your goals?
We realize that in order to achieve our 10-minute walk goal we’ll need help. Parkology was created to allow residents of communities who are passionate about green space to bridge connections and explore opportunities that can help advance access to parks, improve the quality or parks, and increase the proximity of parks close to home.
What challenges have you faced working on this project?
One of our main challenges is getting this resource in the hands of residents who need it most. We’re doing our best to get Parkology into the hands of people who can use it the most, and we hope that joining the Global Sprint will be one step toward bringing awareness that this resource is available for all to use while getting feedback on our efforts thus far.
What kind of skills do I need to help you?
Anyone who is passionate about green spaces and local parks can join and participate on Parkology.
How can others join your project at #mozsprint 2018?
The Trust for Public Land’s New York City office in the NOHO neighborhood has a conference room that can hold 20 people, and in the spirit of inclusion and openness, we are excited to welcome all NYC sprinters to join us on May 10. We’ll be working on Parkology as well as other exciting projects, sign up to join us on that day here. If you’re not in NYC, you can participate by completing some introductory and fun tasks listed on GitHub.
What meme or gif best represents your project?
Join us wherever you are May 10–11 at Mozilla’s Global Sprint to work on many amazing open projects! Join a diverse network of scientists, educators, artists, engineers and others in person and online to hack and build projects for a health Internet. Register today
