Youth from Fresno’s Building Healthy Communities worked for over five hours on Saturday, Sept. 10 to create a new path in Romain Park.
The path is a project of Every Neighborhood Partnership, Fresno’s Parks, After School, Recreation and Community Services (PARCS), and Building Healthy Communities.
Artie Padilla, executive director at Every Neighborhood Partnership, said his organization regularly works with PARCS to coordinate service projects in Fresno – usually several each weekend. “Every time you can get residents serving their own community, there is a greater feeling of ownership,” Padilla said.
Arthur Servin, program assistant at Fresno Metro Ministries was one of the community members working on the path. Servin said the project was a “great idea and a much needed addition” to the park. He echoed the belief of many by saying that these types of projects increase feelings of ownership within the community, and supported this type of work within the park by saying that it “shows people that the city hasn’t forgotten this park.”
Work on this project will continue later this week on Wednesday, Sept.14th and Saturday, Sept. 17th.
In 2006, over 25 youth began participating in weekly after-school writing workshops where they congregated in the hallway of a two-story building in West Fresno and learned the essentials of creating media and telling their stories. The group evolved over the next five years and is now proudly recognized as The kNOw Youth Media.
Through our program, we create opportunities for our youth participants, who in turn create long-term positive change in their communities. Our approach weaves youth development and youth media innovation to produce our biannual youth publication, multimedia projects, and community forums.
The kNOw began as a project of New America Media, which was the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. In 2018 The kNOw became a project of Youth Leadership Institute.
