HOPE in Parks and Recreation

Parks Are Part of the Community's Protective Infrastructure

In 2026, Kimberly identified a gap in sector-specific HOPE guidance for parks, recreation, community development, and the built environment. She then co-developed a parks-and-recreation adaptation of the Four Building Blocks of HOPE with Amanda Winn of the HOPE National Resource Center. This Growing HOPE guide carries that learning into practical community use without reproducing the working national-center document.

• Parks and recreation can create repeated, low-pressure opportunities for children, families, neighbors, staff, and volunteers to know one another.
• Trails, playgrounds, gardens, recreation programs, and gathering spaces shape whether people experience welcome, safety, access, belonging, and restoration.
• The value is not only the physical project. It is also who helps shape it, who can reach it, what happens there, and whether people see themselves as part of the place.

Relationships: Design for Connection

• Create places where conversation and informal relationship-building can happen without requiring a purchase or membership.
• Offer activities for shared interests, cultures, ages, and life stages, including parent-and-baby gatherings, walking groups, teen events, and intergenerational programs.
• Prepare staff and volunteers to welcome people, notice exclusion, support connection, and help community members feel seen and valued.
• Use seating, shade, gathering points, and program design to make staying and connecting easier.

Environments: Make Access, Safety, and Belonging Visible

• Invite residents of different ages, abilities, cultures, neighborhoods, and levels of park use to identify what welcome and safety mean in practice.
• Examine physical access, transportation, cost, hours, lighting, restrooms, water, shade, wayfinding, sensory needs, language, and the condition of equipment and paths.
• Use welcoming signs, resource boards, nature, gardens, and outdoor learning areas to support exploration and connection.
• Treat unequal access to public space as a systems issue that may require investment and policy change, not a personal failure to participate.

Engagement: Let Community Members Shape and Steward the Place

• Use surveys, focus groups, walks, youth advisory groups, and community conversations before decisions are final.
• Create meaningful roles through community gardens, cleanups, conservation, storytelling, cultural events, mentoring, and recreation leadership.
• Make decision rights clear so residents know what they can influence, lead, or co-create.
• Close the feedback loop by showing what changed, what could not change yet, and what happens next.

Emotional Growth: Make Room for Play, Challenge, Creativity, and Restoration

• Protect space for curiosity, unstructured play, art, music, storytelling, cultural traditions, and age-appropriate challenge.
• Use trails, gardens, quiet spaces, and natural areas for reflection, restoration, and connection with the living environment.
• Offer leadership and skill-building experiences that grow confidence, decision-making, resilience, and a sense of contribution.
• Celebrate individual and community accomplishments without turning participation into competition or public disclosure.

Begin With a HOPE Walk

Invite a small, varied group to experience the park or recreation setting together. Notice what helps or limits connection, access, participation, belonging, play, and restoration. Choose one visible improvement and one longer-term systems question.

• Whose relationships can grow here, and who may still feel alone or watched?
• What makes the space physically and emotionally welcoming, and what creates friction?
• Where can residents contribute, decide, lead, create, or care for the place?
• What supports curiosity, confidence, reflection, joy, and recovery from stress?

Kimberly's Emerging Local Practice

Kimberly has begun using this lens in conversations involving the City of Fairview, Bowie Nature Park, and Friends of Bowie. The developing ideas include storybook-trail elements, welcoming wayfinding, nature play, accessible community-informed improvements, gardens, stewardship, and messaging about HOPE, belonging, beauty, resilience, and connection. This work is in development; it is not presented here as a funded or completed project.