New Year Reflections
January marks my official one-year anniversary as Executive Director of Greater Park Hill Community Inc. With more than 20 years experience working with nonprofits in volunteer recruitment, fundraising, management and as an executive director, as well as serving on the GPHC Board for a year, I felt prepared to step into this role. Even so, it has been an exciting and challenging year working with something so close to my heart as my own Registered Neighborhood Organization.
I’ve had the opportunity to learn from and work with a dedicated and hard-working executive committee, and learn everything that goes in to making GPHC function behind the scenes, which has been a truly eye-opening experience. I encourage everyone to attend one of our monthly meetings and to consider getting involved on a deeper level on our board of governors if you care about Park Hill issues.
Myriad of issues
I’ve had to become a Jill-of-All-Trades, such as learning to cultivate plants for our food pantry, and honing writing skills to coalesce thoughts into something hopefully coherent for my monthly newspaper column.
I’ve had an opportunity to meet with Park Hill neighbors on a myriad of issues, from schools to liquor licenses, concerns about uses of City Park and crime, and fielding questions on topics as diverse as traffic flow and power lines, to whether a lawn full of vacuums is art or commerce. I receive daily requests for other types of aid in addition to our food pantry and coat giveaways, so I do my best to connect people with other helping programs. No one day is like another and I love the diversity of issues I get to work on as reflective of the diversity of our neighbors and Park Hill’s history. It’s been an incredible year.
After our emergency food pantry was discontinued in 2012 for a period of reassessment, I’ve written about the ongoing need for our pantry and the families we’ve served. What I perhaps haven’t fully covered are all the volunteers who have made it possible as it now operates.
We’ve received almost 14,000 pounds of food donated since I started, which has been sorted by local school groups, Girl Scout troops, church groups, parent co-ops, retirees and caring community members. We’ve been able to serve several hundred people in 10 months since re-opening, through food and financial donations made in Park Hill and for Park Hill. It is tremendously gratifying to see how our neighborhood offers its support to those in need.
Thank you to Pamela and Becky
In December, we passed our inspection by Food Bank of the Rockies, with their Director of Agency Relations declaring that our Pantry was “the cleanest and most organized I’ve ever seen.” While I take great pride in that glowing review, the credit goes to our dedicated group of volunteers who have helped to run the pantry this year, especially Becky Richardson and Pamela Washington.
Becky started a year ago this month, and comes in several hours per week to help with pantry paperwork and organizational projects as well as food distributions. Becky helped me research the operation of other food programs to suggest best practices and structure operations prior to our re-opening. I trust her as my right-hand person to track pantry paperwork, and to continuously improve our program. I am truly grateful to all she has given to GPHC this year and her no-nonsense yet humorous approach to any problem. She’s dynamic, fearless, and creative like no one I’ve ever met.
Pamela first started volunteering after bumping into me outside the GPHC office early last spring and asking about what we did. From casual beginnings I could not have imagined how incredibly valuable she would become. Pam now works for GPHC as our Blockworker Coordinator to ensure our newspapers get delivered, but she also still volunteers her time weekly to sort incoming food donations and organize them on our shelves, and to help with our food distribution to clients.
With a background in corrections, but also with knowledge about seemingly everything else under the sun, Pam has a wealth of diverse skills that all seem to come in handy for whatever GPHC needs. She finds a way to do everything more efficiently, and takes on every new project with a calm can-do attitude.
I am truly grateful to Pam and Becky for keeping the GPHC Emergency Food Pantry running smoothly over the past year. I could not operate it without them- they are tremendous assets so I wanted to specifically thank them for their many hours of service in 2013.
More to come in ‘14
2014 looks to be another exciting year of growth for GPHC programs. We have new board members in place, a new newspaper editor, and new goals. With cuts in food stamps we anticipate a large increase in utilization of the GPHC Food Pantry and its garden of fresh produce next summer.
As a distribution site for Denver Urban Gardens, in January residents may apply for free food seeds to be distributed in March and plants to be distributed in May. Although aimed at low-income households anyone may sign up to receive their choice of a variety of edible plants from tomatoes, to beans, broccoli and cauliflower. Please come by our office Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. before Jan. 30 to sign up for this program.
We will host our regular neighborhood fundraisers: the Garden Walk in June and the Home Tour in September. We welcome volunteers to get involved with either event’s planning committee, neighborhood-wide cleanup projects in April, or other activities throughout the year.
Please contact Robyn at 303-388-0918 or director@greaterparkhill.org to volunteer, or join us for one of our monthly meetings (Jan. 9, then the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. except July and December). Resolve to get involved in 2014 … and Happy New Year from GPHC!