POGO PARK
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Mission Statement
In one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s toughest inner-city neighborhoods, Richmond’s Iron Triangle, Pogo Park is building great parks and playgrounds. By transforming broken city parks into safe and magical play spaces, we can make thousands of at-risk children healthier.
About This Cause
Pogo Park is about much more than playgrounds. It’s about using the transformation of parks to transform communities and make them healthier. Nearly 8,000 children live in Richmond’s Iron Triangle, one square mile that is among the San Francisco Bay Area’s most densely populated, hard-core inner-city neighborhoods. • 97% are children of color; • 95% live in poverty; • More than 50% are obese; • Their rate of asthma is nearly double the Contra Costa County average; • Before Pogo Park began its work, these children were trapped indoors, with no outdoor places to play. Neighborhood parks were dangerous, desolate, deserted. Great parks and playgrounds are potent medicine for sick places, affording children (and adults) profound health benefits. Rich active outdoor play is the “mother’s milk” of healthy development. Decades of research shows undeniably that such play improves physical health as well as language skills and boosts social skills, empathy, creativity, and imagination. Children who play are less aggressive, show more self-control and higher levels of thinking, and have fewer attention disorders than nonplayers. Active outdoor play is a highly effective way to prevent and reverse childhood obesity. Pogo Park has pioneered an entirely new way of thinking about urban park management. We organize, hire, and educate local residents to re-imagine and rebuild neglected neighborhood parks and to work in them as stewards, keeping them safe, clean, and welcoming. The presence of responsible adults is what makes inner-city parks work. Pogo Parks promote deep play—the kind that feeds children’s minds, bodies, and spirits and connects them to nature, the community, and their own inner strengths. We provide sand, water, and “loose parts”—open-ended materials and movable objects for building forts and castles and for inventing characters, stories, and adventures. Instead of just building a park FOR people, we empower them to build it themselves. We turn the traditional way of building parks on its head. The people who live in and know their neighborhood best—adults and children—envision their new park and build a 3-D model of it with their own hands, then play with the elements of the design until it feels right. Only then is the design put on paper. The Trust for Public Land found this model for park design so revolutionary and compelling that it is partnering with us to bring it to other cities. Our first park, Elm Playlot, was a neglected, toxic eyesore. Now it’s a magical kid magnet. Elm Playlot has become a beacon of hope—a visible emblem of community transformation that could, with your help, go viral. We have already begun to bring the proven Pogo Park model piloted at Elm Playlot to other parks in Richmond, and we have been contacted by the San Francisco YMCA and others who want to create their own versions of it. We are documenting our work in order to produce a toolkit for park transformation. It will include videos and literature, in English and Spanish, graphically laying out the principles and essential elements of the process, with templates for the legal agreements and contracts required for “adopting” public parks, guidelines for hiring and educating staff, and tools for fundraising and financial management. The Pogo Park resident team will advise other Bay Area communities that want to launch their own park projects. We may also become a source for play materials—sandboxes, seating, storage containers—in partnership with local businesses. Diversifying our sources of revenue will enhance Pogo Park’s sustainability. We are working on an array of intractable, interlocking issues: child development, economic development, public health, public safety, joblessness, youth development, urban blight, and malignant hopelessness. The people of the Iron Triangle have seen a procession of failed efforts to solve these chronic problems. “The parade comes through with big ideas and lofty words,” says Pogo Park’s Carmen Lee. “The money flows to other places, and after they’ve gone all that’s left is dust.” Pogo Park has broken that dismal pattern. What makes us unique is that we harness people’s hope for their children and empower local residents to take charge of the work, to define its goals, and to benefit directly from the investment that fuels it. That empowerment creates a sense of ownership that is the essential ingredient of long-term success. At Elm Playlot, our pilot site, the change is striking. Neighbors defend their park ferociously, because they designed and built it with their own ideas and hands. They clean it daily. They report suspicious activity. If graffiti appears overnight, it is removed immediately. What was an eyesore has become a jewel—a magnet for children and families and a center of community life. Just ask Shanti, Oscar, Markeith, Reynaldo, or any of the other neighborhood children who come every day.