Pogo Park

Pogo Park is about much more than playgrounds. It is about using the transformation of underused inner-city parks to transform entire communities and make them healthier. Our unique, holistic approach combines two distinct but interrelated strategies: child development and community development.

Child Development: Parents of every race, ethnicity, and economic condition share one trait: hope for their children's future. But the people of the Iron Triangle have seen a procession of failed efforts to solve the chronic problems of poverty, ineffective schools, and unsafe streets that imperil their children's healthy development.

Great parks and great playgrounds are potent medicine for sick neighborhoods, affording children and youth profound health benefits. Rich, active outdoor play is the "mother's milk" of healthy development. Decades of research shows that such play improves physical and psychological health as well as boosting social skills, empathy, creativity, and imagination.

Community Development: What makes Pogo Park unique is that we empower local residents to take the lead role in transforming broken, little-used parks in their own neighborhood. Rather than the old model where "experts" design and build parts FOR the people, Pogo Park's approach is to hire and train local residents to design and build the parks themselves.

By directing dollars for capital projects back into the local community, Pogo Park's model works like a mini-stimulus plan in neighborhoods like Richmond's Iron Triangle.

Pioneering model program: In eight years, Pogo Park pioneered a new approach to work deeply with the community to rebuild under-utilized city parks in tough, inner-city neighborhoods. Pogo Park built two parks that are improving the safety, health, and wellbeing of Richmond's families. Our approach –parks built by the community, for the community – is now recognized as a state and national model for using community engagement to transform the poorest, most violent, least healthy urban neighborhoods in the country.

Track record of successful leadership and fundraising: From 2007 to 2014, Pogo Park raised $8.5 million in capital, operating, and project support from governments, foundations, and individual donors, including highly competitive multi-million-dollar government grants. Executive Director Toody Maher built deep relationships and trust with these funders and donors. Pogo Park is well positioned to build on this track record and is committed to building additional fundraising infrastructure to do so.

BUILT ELM PLAYLOT, THE WORLD'S FIRST POGO PARK: After seven years of neighborhood mobilization, design, and construction, we opened Elm Playlot for play! Every day, dozens of kids who did not have a safe outdoor haven come to the park to ride the zip line and swings, invent imaginary games in the "Global Village" of child-sized playhouses, do their homework, or sit quietly under one the sycamore trees and enjoy nature. Moms, dads and caregivers are becoming acquainted with neighbors they have never known. Most nights now, play and community gathering time extends into the evening under the glow of our five magnificent and now beautifully lit sycamore trees. Elm Playlot has become a safe and vibrant hub of community life.

BUILT HARBOUR-8 PARK: Building on the experience and confidence gained from completing Elm Playlot on time and on budget, Pogo Park's local resident team designed and built Harbour-8 Park in six months! Supported by a “Rapid Park Activation" grant from the Trust for Public Land (TPL), help from the city of Richmond and TPL, and guidance from our friends at Scientific Art Studio, Pogo Park's Community Resident Team designed and built (by hand) a large sandbox with a water feature, a 300-foot decorative perimeter fence, four benches carved, sanded and stained from re-claimed wood, and a massive spiderweb. Located two blocks from five schools, Harbour-8 Park on the Richmond Greenway, is the second “Pogo Park" in Richmond's Iron Triangle neighborhood. The park expands our reach into this neighborhood - and has become an instant hit!


PLANNED THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD: In a 2008 summer youth program, a group of teenagers from the Iron Triangle neighborhood were given this task: think of a project that would improve their neighborhood. They came up with a brilliantly simple idea: the Yellow Brick Road.
They envisioned stenciling yellow bricks on sidewalks and roads to create “safe, green, and clean" routes to walk and bike. The Yellow Brick Road would connect key community assets (schools, parks, transportation, shopping etc.) together.

Over two days in October 2014, Pogo Park organized the “Living Preview" – a full-scale, 3-D, mock-up of the proposed Yellow Brick Road street improvements. Pogo Park's team designed and built mock-ups of the traffic circles, bike lanes, green islands, and bulb-outs that will transform the route between Elm Playlot and Peres School into a walkable, bikeable path. Community members, city staff, firemen and fire engines all walked and drove through the proposed new streetscapes. This innovative process electrified the neighborhood while troubleshooting for any problems in the design.

WINNER - GOOGLE'S BAY AREA IMPACT CHALLENGE: Of nearly 1,000 Bay Area non-profit organizations that submitted proposals, Pogo Park was selected as 1 of 10 finalists in Google's 2014 Bay Area Impact Challenge grant.