National Park Service's Next Steps on Community Partnerships
The National Park Service, National Capital Parks-East (NACE) held a Partnership Summit on October 10, 2017. Many Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative members attended. NACE shared a summary of the Summit with attendees in early 2018. The broad priorities and initial actions that NACE highlighted are shared below, and APACC continues to support NACE's efforts to work collaboratively with its community partners.
Broad priorities and initial actions for NACE coming out of the Partnership Summit included:
1. Increase direct communication with NACE partnership network in order to foster effective relationships and leverage mutual skills and expertise.
- Establish key times throughout the year that NACE can inform and engage partners.
- Be more proactive in sharing guidance on NPS permitting, agreements, and contracting processes; starting with updating NACE "partner with us" webpage.
- Provide information about youth hiring authorities to partners in order to help young adults enter the workforce.
2. Support an effective partner network system that will help partners coordinate and collaborate with each other in order to support common organizational goals.
- Create a complete list of partner groups, areas of focus, and organizational skills and support its continued maintenance and accessibility.
- Encourage partners to contribute regularly to the network by sharing best practices to improve outreach and long-term youth engagement.
- Work with NPS National Capital Regional Office and partners to host information sharing sessions and strategy sessions on priority topics.
3. Identify and share new ways for NACE park sites and community groups to work more effectively together on shared goals.
- Create a list of park project priorities and use the list to strategically coordinate with organizations/individuals wanting to partner or volunteer.
- Identify community/park projects with an eye towards equity and 'low hanging fruit' so that NACE and partners can have a few early successes.
Additionally, summit learnings on participant priorities and roles/functions are captured in the two attached snapshots.