My Nonprofit Reviews

Today, roughly 83% of Americans live in an urban environment, and Pogo Park is concentrating efforts to reclaim public green spaces serving residents in inner-city, disadvantaged communities – often their only contact with nature.

Over the last decade, Pogo Park, a local non-profit in Richmond, CA, has pushed to transform abandoned parks into thriving, green children's play spaces in the city’s Iron Triangle neighborhood, a neglected community of color with roughly 13,000 residents.

The Iron Triangle suffers from high rates of unemployment and poverty, underfunded schools, violence and urban decay. The area is surrounded by large manufacturing plants including the Chevron Refinery, Port of Richmond, BNSF Railroad, I-580 Freeway and Richmond Parkway that contribute to the neighborhood’s high levels of ground, water, and air pollution.

Through the building of its refurbished parks, Pogo Park has provided work-skill training, and badly needed jobs to local residents. They have beautified the neighborhood with lush green spaces, and they are transforming a car-centric neighborhood into pedestrian and bicycle-friendly terrain. Pogo Park is extending the power of parks into nearby streets thereby increasing safety, eco-awareness and hope.

In all my years working as an urban design consultant I’ve never been as excited as I am with Pogo Park's ongoing work. Their success is the result of more than 10 years of neighborhood efforts ignited from the ground up. They have empowered residents to heal themselves, drastically changed the trajectory of thousands of lives, and injected a strong measure of environmental and social justice into a severely disadvantaged community.

The Pogo Park organization is expertly managed and is a powerhouse in our community. I strongly urge anyone interested in youth, jobs, play, community organizing, eco-spaces and economic growth in a severely disadvantaged community to take a look at its website: www.pogopark.org ..... and most of all, pay them a visit.