At Partnerships for Parks, we believe that active and involved communities are essential to vibrant parks and neighborhoods and to a healthy city.

Our mission is to help New Yorkers work together to make neighborhood parks thrive. We strengthen our diverse, growing network of dedicated park volunteers and groups by creating opportunities for them to celebrate their parks and accomplishments, access resources, become more effective leaders in their communities, and work with government to affect decisions about their parks.

Our work will ensure a culture of collaboration among people and government that supports parks as vital centers of community life.

We began in 1995 for two reasons. First, we were responding to decades of cuts in funding for New York City's parks. We believed that there was a large, untapped parks constituency that could be identified and encouraged to speak up to secure adequate public support. Second, the striking results of citizen-led efforts to transform parks, involving groups ranging from a tiny block association in Hell's Kitchen to the Central Park Conservancy, convinced us that local constituencies needed to be formed and strengthened for every park.