The Spirit of Earth Day: Revitalizing our communities
In the spirit of Earth Day and being good stewards of the environment, it is important to also remember to be good stewards of our community. Rebuilding Together San Francisco is a non-profit organization that connects volunteers with construction projects focusing on the rejuvenation of communities. With projects ranging from single family homes to non-profit organizations and school facilities, the San Francisco chapter has helped over 1,000 houses and 250 facilities since its inception in 1989. This coming Saturday, April 28th is National Rebuilding Together Day where chapters and volunteers from around the country will partake in making their communities a better place.
High school students designed and built this 'parklet' in San Francisco's Outter Mission neighborhood.
The good news is that being stewards of the environment and stewards of community revitalization are not mutually exclusive. The Parklet movement in San Francisco is benefiting communities by adding public space along commercial corridors, while improving our environment by encouraging pedestrian and bicycling transportation over cars. Out of Site, a local non-profit organization, brings the arts into public high schools. This year the architecture students designed, permitted and built a parklet on Mission Street near Ocean Avenue – the first one constructed in the Outter Mission neighborhood where many of the students live.
During the ribbon cutting celebration on Friday, students and community leaders participated in a drum circle on their new parklet
Hi Bridgett,
I love the attention on San Francisco’s parklet program, especially the 29th parklet referenced above as I was one of the organizers that helped see its creation. A few points of clarification though: it’s actually located in the Excelsior Neighborhood, not the Outer Mission. This is significant because it is the first Parklet in District 11, indeed in all of South East San Francisco. The Mission Neighborhood already has the most parklets of any neighborhood in the city–making additional ones there less exciting (of course, this is the opinion of an Excelsior Neighborhood member).
Also, in addition to the deep level of involvement of Out of Site’s high school students (a parklet first), this project is also very exciting because it is the first parklet to include a deep level of community involvement–organized by the Excelsior Action Group, my nonprofit, and co-sponsor of the parklet with OOS and Mama Art Cafe. This involvement took place in community meetings we hosted so that residents could review the designs created by the OOS students, community surveys we conducted to ensure that a parklet was something residents wanted in the first place, and opening up the parklet construction process to volunteers from the Excelsior Community (in addition to the OOS high school student construction interns)–making this the first truly community sponsored parklet in San Francisco. All this, in addition to the more mundane aspects of securing the permitting, half the funding, etc for the project.
Both of our organizations were also supported of the City of San Francisco, particularly the Office of Education and Workforce Development, which provided the majority of material funds for the project (through EAG), and the SF Planning Department, which really helped us through the permitting process. Indeed, one of the city planners even volunteered in the construction effort on 5 different days because he supported our project.
–John Carroll
As we continue to find ourselves in a situation where natural resources are getting depleted at rapid rates, it becomes imperative that we consider as many options to bring ourselves closer to the environment, and to the use of eco-friendly, non-depleting resources as possible.