Making change - NRPA Perspective

Parks & Recreation, Oct, 2001 by T. Destry Jarvis

Perhaps because I have lived most of my life in or near the Blue Ridge Mountains, fall is my favorite time of year. The change signified by fall foliage is both magical, humbling, and necessary to survival. This sort of periodic change is necessary to the survival of organizations, as well.

After three months as your executive director, I have developed a very clear picture of where NRPA has been, and with the Board and staff, have begun to bring about the changes that are vital to our regeneration and evolution in order to increase the value, visibility and clout of the parks and recreation field.

As a professional society, there is much that NRPA has done, but much more that it could and will do to benefit the 250,000 or so men and women who have made their careers in our field. Passion for your work can carry a person quite far, but it is not enough. I intend for NRPA's future work to move the profession forward to include enhancing continuing education and certification by encompassing new, emerging issues confronting day-to-day management, including accessibility, diversity, sustainability, and building constituency. I see expanding the reach of certification to state and federal recreation agencies, focusing first on the 025 park ranger and 023 recreation planner. I want to help revitalize SCHOLE and JLR.

As professionals you make your best decisions when you have all of the relevant and useful information before you decide. NRPA has an important role to play in the assimilation, aggregation, and dissemination of information to you, by the most efficient and frequent means. Watch for our new Information Technology Architecture Plan.

In both the policy and political worlds, information is power; we need it better, faster, and more relevant. It's part of NRPA's job to empower you. We need more park and recreation professionals as members to serve them better and to increase our influence in our key role in public policy.

On the citizen-side of NRPA, we have woefully under-utilized the latent grassroots power that the active park and recreation user represents. Unlike any other organization in the park and recreation field, we have an important presence in over 5,000 communities in every State in the USA.

This presence could be powerful, if the public we reach were organized, motivated, and focused. Further, today there are literally thousands of local park and recreation "friends" groups and other civic societies at the local level that could greatly magnify the political support for parks and recreation programs if it were informed of the need, focused, trained and turned loose. I believe that "when the people lead, the leaders will follow.' Empowering this part of NRPA's base will be my personal top external priority.

We have also made inadequate use of a large number of potential partner organizations that share some or all of our core values. I am for partnerships, and we will enter into many, while maintaining the focus on OUR mission.

Taken together, information and a turned-on constituency are the only effective means that a non-profit organization like NRPA has to influence public policy. We need both elements to be honed to a keen edge and thrust into the public process of the legislative and executive branches of government. Are you ready for change?

T. Destry Jarvis Executive Director