Creating tomorrows parks today!
Parks are a hive of community activities created and organised by locals like you.
Smart Parks provide a unique opportunity for all parks and communities to become a vibrant self-funding space, with wellbeing for people and nature, education and financial sustainability running through everything, joining up the dots between humans, nature and wellbeing of all involved, whilst reducing costs on the public purse.
It is already accepted that parks are healthy and if you agree with this, then also think about how many Councils have left parks to decay due to lack of interest or funds, yet parks are more healthy and cheaper to run than a community centre and if used correctly, can actually help Local Councils reduce their bottom line in a number of ways.
If you want to start a group in your local area contact your Councils community engagement office who will point you in the right direction.
ARE YOU LOCAL? There are several ways to get involved, including joining in with existing activities that are held weekly and monthly, or helping with our ongoing projects, events and working groups, who are constantly working on many tasks.
GREAT COMMUNITY SPACE
EVERY SUNDAY, during the summer, we meet up in the park around 10.00 am to undertake some light maintenance jobs, gardening and litter picking, this can easily be organised in any area or park, it's rewarding, healthly and a great way to get to know the locals.
Four Distinct Goals
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The litter picking starts bringing in locals, because people care, then the area starts to look better and things just roll on from here!
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Volunteers are formed from everyday people like you and me that wanted to take responsibility for and transformed the local park and area.
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The smart park goals create a community most people would like, so has been created from ideas and dreams of the very people that use the parks.
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The projects bind us together in healthy non-contentious ways for the good of all which leans itself nicely towards a better community feeling in the area and the myriad of goodness this brings.
Smart Nature
Education is key to the wellbeing of a local areas habitat, each park has an abundance bugs, birds, flora and fauna. If young people are encouraged to understand the nature of the park, this will be amazingly brilliant for all our future.
Smart Technology
The ease of how things just click, tether, transfer together nowadays is truly amazing, so we thought why not click some tech together and use it for nature and wellbeing.
The objective is designed to encourage, cajole and enthral local residents of all ages to use and learn about the park in lots of different ways, some ingenious, some simple and expected, once implemented correctly and together we will be able to secure our distinct goals.
Smart Donations
Supporting our Smart Community Park goals costs you no money! If you are buying anything on Amazon, they will donate a small percentage of sales made by you purchased through this link the prices and offers are the same, except they donate some money to our smart park goals.
This costs you nothing and the prices are the same. If you DONT donate this money we all loose it! it simply goes to Amazon's profits. (Full Details Here)
Smart Thinking
Parks offer wellbeing.
By encouraging the community to get involved strengthens the community, increases wellbeing and ultimately reduces costs on the public purse in a myriad of ways.
Because this is done with volunteers the community at large start feeling involved and this in turn helps people feel comfortable about taking responsibility, which further translates to litter picking in the park and the streets, bringing even further community benefits.
We have a rare window of opportunity to create a space that incorporates an accord between the scientific community, the mind body and soul community and the hippies of the 60’s that all agree parks are healthy, quality of life is important, being outdoors is healthy, talking to others is healthy.
Smart parks bring this together, using goodwill, projects technology and education, that’s smart thinking.
Smart Open Source
Open source is one of the most wonderful ecosystems humans have created. Many people have different views on what it is, to us Open Source is a gift that keeps giving and if your give back the rewards are greater.
The Friends of Harrow Weald subscribe and embrace all aspects of Open Source and try to apply the principle to everything we do, online, on computer and in the real world, sharing is caring.
Smart Marketing
Working with local business creating many different low-cost ways for businesses to support parks and benefit from a high ROI
