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About Washington Parks & People

Location:

2437 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009, US

Mission Statement

To grow city-wide park-based community health, equity, and justice through innnovation and partnerships across DC.

Description

Parks & People is DC's award-winning city-wide community parks partnership. Founded in 1990 to reclaim Meridian Hill/ Malcolm X Park, the organization led the transformation of that park from the most crime-ridden national park in the area to one of the safest. Parks & People has now helped advance over 250 parks, trails, streams, playgrounds, schoolyards, and community gardens and farms. Our facilities include the Josephine Butler Parks Center, an award-winning 40-room "greenhouse" for revitalizing DC greenspaces; the historic Riverside Healthy Living Center, providing park programming, youth development, and healthy park-based business incubation; the Marvin Gaye Community Greening Center, a year-round community farm, native reforestation hub, and base of park reclamation and job training through our DC Green Corps; the Piney Spring Green; and the North Columbia Heights Green, a once-blighted vacant lot that serves as a hands-on outdoor classroom for year-round healthy food production. Parks & People has led the community reclamation and transformation of Marvin Gaye Park, DC's longest municipal park, for 23 years. It also helps the Escarpment Ridge and Fort Circle network of parks, Walter Pierce Park (where 8,428 African Americans were buried after the Civil War), the east side of Rock Creek park, and numerous schoolyards. Since its founding a generation ago, Parks & People has mobilized over 300,000 volunteers for parks and green spaces of all kinds. Parks & People volunteers work hard, have fun, and make a massive difference.