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This year our judges have selected this year's winner, Parks and people Foundation for the
Broadway East Community Park Project.
We're really excited to get the Smart, Green & Growing award this year. It's always exciting
to work with different city agencies and to be able to bring that together with stormwater
management to make a great project happen is always rewarding.
The award is uh we do the work primarily for the benefit but the award is a recognition
of your peers that some of your ideas and implementations are doing the right things.
Not only are committed to funding the why, but also the how. How can we best get this
done. How can we put ours to address something that in fact we can address. We can solve
this problem. We caused it, we can solve it.
We had a hundred or so volunteers come out the day of the event and they were really
excited to help. So it wasn't just about stormwater it was
about quality of life and bringing people together ah to see what this project could
really be.
Ah the volunteers I mean you think put your heart your soul your time into an effort.
And in a neighborhood that needs some tender loving care. There's been a lot of investment
in this. But what's happened is the tearing down of 18 dilapidated houses, peoples time
and effort to come into those things, put it all together and the professionals like
the designers, to the money to the Humanum across the street. All these things really
make for a project and the volunteers are the critical they are the lifeblood.
The community was with it 100% of the way they came out and they helped us plant that
day. And they said their thanks on how excited they were to have this in their community
opposed to the blight that was there before. The trust fund is the catalyst of this project.
Good intentions without funding do not really produce results. So organizations like ours
have a lot of great thoughts but working the trust fund in a public private partnership
it creates results like the ones we just achieved here.
So for the last five or six years we have been in a recession, post recession and what
not. And desite all of that, the funding for this program has continued. It is funding
for the present it is funding for the future. And we think, we think that's pretty cool.
We think it's kind of putting priorities where they belong.
The process of getting the funding was pretty great. DNR is great to work with, everybody
is behind you on the project as we're moving forward. If you have any hiccups or hold ups
or any questions, they're there for you every step of the way.
We have a long standing relationship with the Trust Fund. We've done a lot of projects
with both DNR and MDE and the Trust Fund really worked in terms of a collaborative process,
so while it's a competition it really goes for a long standing tradition of a relationship
with Parks and People, the Trust Fund, MDE and DNR.
It's incredibly rewarding doing something that helps the planet, I mean isn't that every
kid's dream to grow up and make a difference in the world. As humans we have the desire
to make a mark on this land. For a long time we have made negative marks, we've made good
marks. So it's always nice to be on the side of making good marks on the land.
I'm a Baltimore City resident and I have been for a long time so my belief is that you have
to your time and your effort and you monetary things to give back to the city.
The real thing that everybody gets out of it is a place...not just something that functions
but something that is somewhere that .... Becomes part of their life, part of their memories
and brings quality of life to them every day and it's about that daily experience with
your world around you . not just the environmental benefit