Local Volunteers Give Back
On Saturday mornings at 9 a.m., North Brooklyn community members meet at the Morgan Avenue entrance of Cooper Park to participate in Cooper Park’s Weekend Weeders where they spend the next hour doing a variety of maintenance for the park.
On July 27, around 40 people from Friends of Cooper Park and North Brooklyn Runners came together to create the largest number of Saturday volunteers Cooper Park has seen yet. Together, they cleaned up 61 bags of trash inside and around the park.
“The volunteer operations coordinator for New York Road Runners emailed Friends of Cooper Park, asking if we could find a date for a large group of volunteers to join us from the area…We had a blast and got so much done!” stated Sarah Sheffield from Friends of Cooper Park.
Sheffield said North Brooklyn Runners has plans to continue to help with weekend cleanups in the fall.
Cooper Park isn’t the only North Brooklyn park that thrives off of local volunteer work. Bushwick Inlet Park, Transmitter Park, McCarren Park, and McGolrick Park each have their own unique opportunities to get community members involved.
Transmitter Park offers Sunday gardening for the park’s trees and gardens. They have sign-ups posted on their website through November. Bushwick Inlet park offers Weeding Wednesdays, and their sign-ups are posted through October.
“Volunteering in your community broadens and deepens your relationship to your community. Once you’ve picked up trash around a park, I believe you’ll be more invested in keeping it clean. Once you’ve weeded an area and planted and watered plants there, you have a stake in what happens there,” stated Sheffield.
Bushwick Inlet Park (BIP) itself is a prime example of community advocacy and volunteering for green spaces. Community members fought to acquire the amount of the park that they now have, pushing elected officials and organizations.
“Bushwick Inlet Park is…the legacy of community action. As industry faded in the post-World War II era, local activists began fighting to reclaim the waterfront for the community,” BIP writes on their website.
With the lack of green spaces in some areas of North Brooklyn, Sheffield explained that it’s important to maintain what we have.
“Our section of North Brooklyn has very little green space, making our work in Cooper Park extra important. It’s very powerful to see a trash filled park, and then an hour or so later to see a cleaner park and a row of filled garbage bags, ready for pick-up,” said Sheffield.
Sheffield stated how meaningful it can be when members of the community come together to make change.
“One of our current Weekend Weeders used to walk her dog in the park and would chat with me, and would often say ‘one of these days, I’m going to join you.’ And after about a year of stopping to chat with me, she did join us. And now she joins just about every Saturday. Seeing us doing our stewardship thing around Cooper Park showed her that it was HER park too, and that she can show up and make a difference,” stated Sheffield.
If you’d like to volunteer at Cooper Park show up at the Morgan Avenue entrance of Cooper Park 9 a.m. on Saturdays. Go to their Instagram @friendsofcooperpark_
To volunteer at Bushwick Inlet Park go here: https://bushwickinletpark.org/events-calendar/
To volunteer at Transmitter Park go here: https://transmitterpark.org/events/
The Greenline 