As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
Each year, we support inspiring older adults in Metro Vancouver to reconnect with nature by leading events in their local parks—sparking belonging, joy, and wellness in their communities.
Discover how Arts in the Parks is transforming Toronto’s green spaces into vibrant hubs of creativity—and how Park People helps make it all possible.
How colonialism plays out in park practices and how we can work together to embed reconciliation and decolonization.
Discover ways to help you host events in your local parks during extreme heat events.
Each year, Park People Summits bring together our growing network of urban park changemakers to connect, reflect, and explore what’s possible for more inclusive, community-powered parks in our cities.
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You may know Park People from one of our microgrant programs, such as the TD Park People Grants. Through these programs, we provide small amounts of funding to community groups and NGOs to organize activities and events in their local parks.
That all sounds great – but why do we do this? Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks? This post explores these questions and shines a light on some of the tensions and challenges of providing microgrants.
City parks have unrealized potential to promote human wellbeing, biodiversity and climate resilience. Too many people living in Canadian cities cannot easily access high-quality green spaces with amenities and activities that enrich their lives. Neighbourhoods such as my own (in the ward of Davenport in Toronto) are very vulnerable to the increasing heat waves we face because of a lack of trees and green space. The parks that we do have are precious, but they are not neutral spaces. For many reasons, they do not feel safe or promote a sense of belonging for everyone.
One of Park People’s early tenets was that when communities get involved, parks get better. Communities are full of people with energy, ideas, and talents. They understand the opportunities to improve their local parks and the challenges specific to their community. With the right resources, their work can be much more sustainable and responsive than an initiative led by an outside group like Park People. So, our guiding question is: How do we support community leaders in realizing the potential of their local parks?
Our network’s community groups have varied goals, from growing food to promoting biodiversity and supporting mental health. Regardless of their focus area, park events are a great way to build strategic support and awareness for their initiatives. They are joyful and fun, providing an enticing entry point for engaging city staff, fellow community members and local politicians to talk about a vision for the park or the wider community.
Events also have a lot of inherent value, even when they don’t tie into a bigger plan. Our research and program evaluations show that park events build a sense of social connection and belonging, making people feel happier and less isolated. In 2024, these social ties are critical to addressing the pandemic’s mental and physical health repercussions and preparing us to support each other through the ongoing climate crisis challenges, such as urban heat waves and floods.
The diversity of events that groups organize is inspiring. They range from programming to support families with neurodiverse children in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park to hands-on mushroom-growing workshops in Ville de Deux-Montagnes outside Montreal. These events tell us the rich story of what is happening in Canadian city parks so that we can make the case for more resources and support from governments and other stakeholders.
Through microgrants, we can fund groups too small or new to have non-profit status. Although the amounts are small, they help offset the costs of volunteering, especially in lower-income communities. By keeping our application processes simple and removing traditional fundraising barriers (such as the need for non-profit status), people can spend their limited time bringing their ideas to life, trying out new things, and cultivating other support like help from their local city councillor. And at a systems level, we are doing our part in a small way to try to redistribute resources and power within the parks sector.
Offering grants also encourages groups to get in touch with us. Once we are in touch, we can offer other types of support, such as training workshops, coaching, and peer connections. We learn so much about what’s happening and what folks need and dream of doing through applications and conversations. In 2023, we offered phone call applications for smaller grant amounts. There was a groundswell of new groups that stepped forward.
In our annual survey, park groups tell us that their number one need is more funding. Microgrants are a way for us to respond to this need. They also help us build group capacity and relationships to set grantees up to access larger funding in the future.
Park People has been providing microgrants or small honoraria in some form since 2014. We have learned a lot over the years and are still learning.
We are inspired by trust-based philanthropy, which ‘seeks to transform the relationships between philanthropic organizations and non-profits by identifying systemic inequalities and addressing inherent power imbalances,’ as Jennifer Brennan and Shereen Munshi define the term in this article on Indigenous philanthropy. Even though we are a very small-scale funder relative to others, the key principles of identifying systemic inequalities and inherent power imbalances in your ways of working are very relevant. That is why we are continually reflecting and working on:
Providing funding creates an unequal power dynamic between Park People and the groups in our network. This can make it more challenging for groups to provide us with honest feedback on our programs. We do our best to mitigate this by keeping our granting process separate from our evaluation activities, but that introduces another challenge.
Groups that are very engaged in our other program activities, such as our network gatherings, training workshops, conferences and other events, can be particularly disappointed when they don’t receive a microgrant from us. It doesn’t feel great when you have put a lot into engaging with Park People to receive a no on your grant application.
How can providing funding be part of a reciprocal and not transactional relationship? We are excited about exploring more participatory approaches to granting that centre decision-making in the hands of community members, which could allow us to navigate this tension better.
Park People supports community park groups and NGOs following a tiered support model. Microgrants are intended to help groups get started or get established in their community, but in some cases, groups evolve to a stage where $1500 or $2000 is too small to be worth applying for. This is a success story, but it means that the microgrants Park People has available to offer do not match the needs of many groups.
We do our best to connect these groups to larger funding opportunities through fundraising workshops, tailored sessions to support groups in applying for specific grants like TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, and our funding web page which features links to dozens of grants. These activities are well-attended and valued by participants and are consistent with our goal to build the capacity of groups rather than engage in local parks ourselves. But they are more complex than providing a microgrant. ‘Success’ becomes harder to define and talk about.
As Park People’s network grows and as parks became more central to people’s lives during the pandemic, the number of people applying for grants has increased significantly. This means we are saying no to more people every year. There is an ongoing tension between wanting to encourage many people to get engaged in parks and not wanting to waste people’s time participating in grant application processes where their odds of success are low.
We are currently reflecting on the pros and cons of trying to expand the availability of our microgrants versus building up other types of support for the groups in our network. There is probably no perfect answer. In the short term, we are finding creative ways to meet this demand. For example, some of our recent and planned changes to our microgrants include:
2021-2023:
2024:
In the longer term, Park People does not envision a permanent role for ourselves in funding park groups. We believe that larger institutions like municipalities should review how decision-making and power-sharing work in their parks and public spaces. They have the resources to provide more systematic and continuous support for community-led initiatives. Ultimately, we dream of the groups in our network being able to spend more time enriching their communities and parks, and less time fundraising. Systemic changes, such as reforming park permitting processes or dedicating staff to community engagement on an ongoing basis, are critical.
Returning to our guiding question – how do we support community leaders in realizing their local parks’ potential to enhance well-being and resilience? Microgrants that fund events and activities in those parks are one tool in our support toolbox for community leaders. As you have read in this post, they are not the be-all and end-all of support for community leaders, and they don’t meet the needs of every group.
Engage and learn with us
Are you a non-profit that provides microgrants or has in the past? What did you learn? Are you a community member who has accessed or tried to access Park People’s grants? Tell us your thoughts on microgrants – the good, the bad, and what Park People can do to improve.
Further reading
It takes deliberate thinking and action to enjoy park and ravine spaces while ensuring they’re protected. How can you use ravine and park events to foster reciprocity and ensure the natural world benefits as much as the community does?
We want to help more people connect to and engage with Toronto’s ravines through our InTO the Ravines program. However, given the environmental sensitivity of the ravines, this goal must be carefully balanced against the importance of protecting these fragile spaces. After all, Toronto is a city of almost 3 million people and population growth, new development and climate change are all putting increased pressure on the ravines which do a whole lot of “heavy lifting” for our city.
We are eager for more people to experience the ravines and see an opportunity for these kinds of events to contribute rather than just extract from the natural world. However, this takes deliberate thinking and action. We encourage people to start by asking:
How can your event be in alignment with nature? How can you use a ravine event to foster reciprocity to ensure the natural world benefits as much as the community does? How can you strive to use events as opportunities to give back to the natural world which offers us these meaningful and enriching experiences?
We explore these questions through conversations with Monica Radovski, Natural Environment Specialist from the City of Toronto in the Natural Environment and Community Programs unit of Urban Forestry and Carolynne Crawley, a Mi’kmaw woman with mixed ancestry from the East Coast known today as Nova Scotia. Carolynne operates her own business, Msit Nokmaq, which focuses upon decolonizing current interactions with the land, self, and others to build healthy and reciprocal relationships.
Given that we are writing this on the land we now call Toronto, which is on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, Carolynne focuses our conversation on sharing teachings that may resonate across many nations. She also reminds us that Indigenous people have been in relationship to these lands since time immemorial.
“I see the earth as my teacher, my healer, my confidant, my companion”
Carolynne Crawley, Founder Msit No’kmaq
Carolynne emphasises that many Indigenous nations across Turtle Island believe that in order to be in “right relations” with the land, water, and other beings, we must treat our relationships with the natural world as we would our family relations or friendships. For example, if you have a friendship in which a friend is always giving and the other is always taking, the relationship will be out of balance and will likely suffer. Similarly, as Carolynne emphasises, when we take from the land without giving back to it or nurturing it, we not only harm the land, but we harm ourselves. We damage ourselves by damaging our relationship to nature as we are all interconnected.As a reflection exercise before planning an event on the land, ask yourself: What can I offer back to the land in return for its gifts? What does living with reciprocity with the land, water, and species mean to me?
There are no simple answers to these questions, but Carolynne offered some helpful suggestions to consider when hosting ravine and park events:
When you slow down enough to develop a personal and meaningful connection to a park or ravine space, you provide others with a model to begin building their own connections to nature. Start your event by looking around and encouraging others to do the same. Consider what resonates with you: Is it a bird sound? The smell of leaves under foot? Is it seeing water flowing in the distance? Carolynne recommends visiting a spot regularly to build a relationship with it, just as you would with a new friend. One practical approach is to conduct a regular sit spot exercise in which you simply return to a spot at different times to observe what’s around you, how it changes and how you experience it. Doing this before, during and after your event can help you build a connection and consider what you can give back. Encourage event participants to do the same.
When you enter a park or ravine space, consider what you have to offer in return for the enjoyment the park brings to you. Think about the life in the park as being equal in meaning to your own life and think about how this belief might influence how you act. For example:
Monica Radovski, Natural Environment Specialist from the City of Toronto in the Natural Environment and Community Programs unit of Urban Forestry also shared how to host events that demonstrate respect for nature.
When Monica visits a natural space, she imagines that at least 1000 other people are taking the same steps she takes. This helps her remember that even if she is walking by herself, every step counts and that collectively, our steps add up fast. Even if we can’t see others walking with us, our actions never exist in isolation. Encourage your groups to imagine all of the other individuals and groups that will tread on this same path today, tomorrow and in future generations. Imagine your own ancestors walking this same path. How does that influence your actions on the path?
“When we are thinking about how we move on the land it is important to know what the impacts are, but also it’s important we don’t want to treat the land like a museum that we can’t touch, interact with, and have a relationship with the land. There is this fine balance.”
Monica encourages people to use their senses to note what lies under their feet. Fallen logs and crunching leaves under foot may look messy, but they are home to animals and insects and serve as a natural fertilizer for the earth beneath. How does recognizing this inform how you interact with the space?
Look around. If the space around you looks bare it might mean that the area you’re in is being overused. Knowing that might inspire you to consider taking a less popular route. On the other hand, if the space is rich with undercover, walk on it to create the smallest possible impact. Stay on the trail wherever possible, and if you have to go off trail (which is not recommended) consider walking in a zigzag fashion to avoid eroding the earth outside the trail or creating a new informal trail to be tread upon by others. Also, consider walking back along a different route.
Watch for animals, particularly during dawn and dusk when they’re most active. If you spot an animal during the day, observe their behaviour and tweet, call, or email 311 if you see anything unusual. If you observe anything unusual with plants and trails conditions, contact 311 to ensure this information reaches the City’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation staff.
Living in sync with nature means scheduling events with consideration of seasonality. Spring is one of the most sensitive times of the year when animals are having their young and plants are starting to grow. During dawn or dusk you might spot more wildlife. If your event is scheduled during these times, encourage participants to tread as carefully and quietly as possible to minimize disruption to plants and animals.
Nawal is a busy person. She has a full-time job helping newcomers settle in Canada. When she isn’t working or spending time with her family, she volunteers in her local Flemingdon, Toronto community. Flemingdon is a community rich with new immigrants that now call Toronto home. However, many need help navigating a new city and making ends meet. Understanding these challenges herself and driven by a passion to help, Nawal co-founded Flemingdon Community Support Services.
This volunteer-led organization helps the community access food, housing and employment. After months of serving the community, something became clear to Nawal. She began to recognize one crucial gap, a persistent need that wasn’t being met: loneliness. So many of her neighbours felt incredibly isolated and alone.
Nawal approached Park People with an idea.
Flemingdon has vast and beautiful parks. Despite it being a dense area of high and low-rise apartment buildings where most residents don’t have a backyard, this neighborhood off the Don Valley offers sprawling, public greenspaces for everyone to share. But they are underused. Some people don’t feel safe in the parks, while others struggle to find the time or a reason to use them.
Fueled by a passion for community and connection, Nawal worked with Park People to start a weekly Health and Wellness meet-up in her local park. Every week, members of her community gather to explore topics of conversation, ranging from sharing nutritious recipes to engaging in storytelling, learning a dance, or simply taking a walk together. The group is inclusive, consistent and caring. Over time, the gathering evolved into a community hub, where new friendships are forged, and people discover a deep sense of belonging.
Recently, a community member told Nawal she was initially nervous about attending, but now she can’t imagine her life without the weekly meet-up at the park, a mental health refuge for her and a bright light in her week.
Read other community leaders’ stories with Marie-Pierre from Vancouver and Geneviève from Montreal. Their stories feature the incredible work being done to foster social connection and community resilience in parks and green spaces across Canada.
Marie-Pierre is a visionary and advocate for creating green oases in the heart of concrete jungles. Her passion is understanding the challenges and the important role of accessible green spaces. These spaces foster community connections, a sense of place, and an appreciation for histories and practices woven from the land. This vision led to the inception of the Vancouver Urban Food Forest (VUFFF).
Formed amid the pandemic, VUFFF addressed the challenges of isolation and food accessibility in a community of 34,000. Recognizing the need, and with support from Park People, VUFF envisioned a food forest as a haven for urban indigenous communities and low-income residents, championing the belief that access to green spaces and the right to cultivate food are fundamental human rights.
They established Vancouver’s first Indigenous food forest, Chén̓chenstway Healing Garden, in Oxford Park, Vancouver. VUFFF’s ongoing efforts at the Burrard Park View Field House are a testament to their resilience.
With the support of Park People, VUFFF has been able to host community herbal garden workshops and other events to support, connect, and empower their community. Those once disconnected or hesitant about gardening have discovered a nurturing community, valuing their stories and experiences. Through herbal gardens, arts and crafts, and open dialogue, VUFFF has ignited a wave of positive change across the community.
In the concrete jungles of modern cities, Park People supports VUFFF to plant seeds of connection, empowerment, and transformation, reminding us that parks are more than mere spaces – they are the heart of community growth, healing, and prosperity.
As we dream of vibrant cities, we at Park People acknowledge and support the crucial role of community organizations like VUFFF. They are not just sowing seeds of change but nurturing the bonds connecting us to nature and each other.
Read other community leaders’ stories with Nawal from Toronto and Geneviève from Montreal. Their stories feature the incredible work being done to foster social connection and community resilience in parks and green spaces across Canada.
During the first year of COVID, Geneviève learned that rates of food insecurity were skyrocketing in Montreal. Motivated to make a difference, Geneviève envisioned a sustainable response to address hunger in her community: a living and educational agriculture ecosystem composed of three urban gardens.
In this place, people could co-create and participate in planting and growing vegetables together. Living in an urban area of Montreal called Milton Park, she knew it wouldn’t be easy. Despite being next to Mount Royal Mountain, the neighbourhood needs more public parks and sufficient green spaces. She knew it was not a matter of improving pre-existing greenspaces to suit her community’s needs; she had to create them.
After months of knocking on doors, she successfully negotiated three areas for raised garden beds, one even for a greenhouse. She transformed these spaces into communal lots and encouraged community members to take part in the growing process — from planting seeds to weeding, harvesting herbs and vegetables to take home but also empowering people to cultivate their very own pharmacy.
As community interest grew around the gardens, Geneviève learned about post-covid deeper issues. Beyond food insecurity, residents struggled with profound challenges like isolation, stress, and depression. Geneviève recognized the need for more holistic solutions and approached Park People with an idea that could improve the well-being of her neighbours.
She wanted to create a sense of connection and trust among community members. In addition to food access, it creates a supportive environment promoting mental well-being and social connection.
With help from Park People, Geneviève created a series of workshops that wove together plant education with mental wellness and meaningful connection to the land. The first event was in Notman Urban Gardens, an overgrown, green oasis prohibiting public access. There was a meditation workshop, followed by an Indigenous-led teaching on the medicinal properties of the plants. 40 people attended the event and learned how to see the garden as a medicinal pharmacy. Together, they learned how to soak lemon balm with orange peel in water to improve mood, sleep quality and digestion. They touched, tasted and smelled herbs, sparking conversation and discovery.
A community member recently told Geneviève that the workshop helped her feel a sense of belonging and created a sense of connection to her neighbours and the environment she hadn’t experienced before. She learned about plants and their properties, opening up new ways of knowing and seeing the world around her. The workshop inspired her to become a weekly volunteer at the garden, and now she can’t envision her life without it. In the midst of Montreal’s bustling urban landscape, Jardins Pour Tous has become more than a garden but a haven of wellness and connection that she eagerly looks forward to every week.
Read other community leaders’ stories with Nawal from Toronto and Marie-Pierre from Vancouver. Their stories features the incredible work being done to foster social connection and community resilience in parks and green spaces across Canada.
Park People launched the 2023 Canadian City Parks Report, the fifth annual report highlighting the most significant trends, issues, and practices shaping Canada’s city parks.
Watch the webinar recording to meet the report’s researchers and writers and get the inside scoop on:
The report launch webinar features a lively discussion on the report’s key findings and future directions for city parks.
This hour-long webinar features Adri Stark and Jake Tobin Garett, co-author of the report. It is moderated by Selina Young, member of Park People’s Board of Directors and Director, Indigenous Affairs Office at the City of Toronto.
The webinar is held in English; French subtitles are available.
Adri Stark is specialized in research and policy at Park People, and co-author of the annual Canadian City Parks Report.…
Jake Tobin Garrett (he/him) is a writer, illustrator and public space policy and research consultant. He was previously Park People’s…
Selina is Métis from northern Saskatchewan. She has been a guest on Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee territory in and around Toronto…
This case study is part of the 2024 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
Food-based park programming like food forests, community gardens and edible plants have grown in scope and popularity in the last five years in Canadian cities. Clearly, both municipalities and community members see the potential for food production in parks and want to see more of it. Over the past three years, 50% of city residents consistently say they’d like to see more urban agriculture and community gardens in their parks.
But if cities are planning to invest in park-based food programs, how can they ensure they are being used and, crucially, that produce is actually reaching those in need?
Launched in 2020, the City of Victoria’s Get Growing Victoria program uses a food justice approach to provide gardening supplies to communities at-risk of experiencing food insecurity, including people experiencing houselessness, Indigenous and racialized communities, seniors, and youth.
Instead of only focusing on increasing access to fresh food for all residents, food justice acknowledges that certain populations face structural and systemic barriers to food security. By acknowledging the barriers to gardening, the Get Growing program is able to provide sustainable and healthy food to those who tend to be excluded from community garden programs.
The Parks department quickly realized that the best way to reach those at-risk populations was to partner with non-profit organizations who know the community needs best. Collaborating with non-profit partners also meant the City was better able to meet the community where they’re at rather than expecting people to self-identify and sign-up for the program through city processes.
The program now has 67 community partners including public health organizations, mental health service providers, immigrant and refugee organizations, social service providers and affordable housing organizations. The partner organizations distribute gardening supplies and vegetable seedlings grown in City greenhouses to their clients and community members so they can use the materials at home or in their local community garden. Get Growing gives partners the autonomy to integrate the materials into their program delivery in ways that best suit their community’s needs.
City of Victoria food systems coordinator, Julia Ford, tells us they would not be able to run the program without the non-profit partners. “They greatly increase our impact, and allow us to reach more vulnerable communities that the program is intended for and who may not otherwise interact with the City directly.”
Exemplifying Julia’s point, this year our public survey found that over 30% of city residents do not feel confident that they know who to reach out to if they experience a problem or have feedback about their park. By collaborating with local non-profits that do have stronger rapport with local community members, the City of Victoria can reach those who feel disconnected from city services.
Now in the program’s fourth year of operation, it is estimated that 400,000 pounds of fresh produce has been grown. Beyond that, evaluation of program participants found that the vast majority of participants felt that the program increased their mental well-being, intake of healthy foods and increased their overall physical activity levels. The program demonstrates what’s possible in parks when we start looking at them with community health in mind.
“I think this program demonstrates the potential for Parks Departments to really look at the resources they have available and think creatively about how to use them to support community and preventive health in a much more active way,” Ford said. “I think within the Parks sector there’s a solid understanding that passive park use and access to green space is important for mental health and well-being. But how can we move to be active partners in supporting communities who want to spearhead innovative uses of public space? How can we support people to explore new recreational activities in a meaningful, accessible and equitable way?”
Julia Ford, City of Victoria Food Systems Coordinator