PARKners make it easier to get involved in Austin parks

Photo courtesy of Raquel Ortega for Ride Bikes Austin

Ride Bikes Austin (RBA) regularly supports Amigos de Parque Zaragoza, park adopters of Parque Zaragoza Neighborhood Park. Everyone is welcome at these organizations’ free park events, volunteer clean-ups, and group bike rides.

This blog series explores Austin Parks and Recreation's partnerships, or PARKnerships, through the Community PARKnerships Program. We started with the question, "How do PARKners help Austin’s parks?" Our last posts were "PARKners improve physical park spaces and the environment" and "PARKners innovate, bring us into parks, and create activities for us."

Today we'll focus on a final important way that PARKners serve Austin.

PARKners make it easier for you to get involved in Austin parks

You don’t have to be a nature expert to give back to Austin parks. PARKners can help you turn your vision for better Austin parks into reality.

In cooperation with the City, PARKners…

• Organize community clean-ups, plantings, and other volunteer work days
• Offer materials and guidance to host your own volunteer event
• Fund community projects with grants
• Ask for community ideas and feedback before making changes

Photo Courtesy of Fruitful Commons

Volunteers pitch in at Festival Beach Food Forest, a project of Fruitful Commons at Edward Rendon Sr. Metro Park at Festival Beach. The food forest sustainably grows produce that anyone is welcome to harvest for free. Fruitful Commons offers workshops, weekly volunteer opportunities, and mini grants of up to $5,000 to uplift community-led agriculture work. In fiscal year 2023, Austinites volunteered over 31,000 hours in Austin parks!

How do I get involved in a PARKnerships?

PARD would love to have you join our PARKner ecosystem!

Volunteers are crucial to the work of our existing PARKners. Here are a few that could use your support:

• Austin Parks Foundation (which can also connect you to local Adopt-a-Park groups)
• Austin Ridge Riders Mountain Bike Club
• Austin Youth River Watch
• Barton Springs Conservancy
• Ecology Action of Texas
• Festival Beach Food Forest (Fruitful Commons)
• Keep Austin Beautiful
• Pease Park Conservancy
• Shoal Creek Conservancy
• The Trail Conservancy
• Travis Audubon
• TreeFolks
• Waterloo Greenway

Do you represent an organization that is interested in a PARKnership with the City of Austin? We would love to help you improve Austin’s parks. Reach out to the Community PARKnerships team.

See you in the parks!

Photo Courtesy of The Trail Conservancy

Check out our whole series exploring what our partners, or PARKners, do for Austin.

• How do PARKners help Austin’s parks?
• PARKners improve physical park spaces and the environment
• PARKners innovate, bring us into parks, and create activities for us
• PARKners make it easier to get involved in Austin parks