Grant money provides funding for Dunne Park project
On a recent Thursday afternoon, a group of teens gathered in
Dunne Park. The students had clipboards in hand, and staked out
different sections of the park to monitor the activities. The
students marked down everything they saw
– positive and negative – noting frequency and duration.
The afternoon monitoring is the first step in the Dunne Park
Restoration Project and a long-term goal to make the park more
family-friendly for the community.
Grant money provides funding for Dunne Park project
On a recent Thursday afternoon, a group of teens gathered in Dunne Park. The students had clipboards in hand, and staked out different sections of the park to monitor the activities. The students marked down everything they saw – positive and negative – noting frequency and duration.
The afternoon monitoring is the first step in the Dunne Park Restoration Project and a long-term goal to make the park more family-friendly for the community.
The Hollister Youth Alliance has been awarded a $100,000 grant for the next 16 months to work on the project.
The funds come from the Health Trust, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit that selected three local organizations as part of the Healthy People Healthy Places grant through the Convergence Partnership Fund of Tides Foundation. The youth leaders are paid through the One-Stop Career Center.
Lisa Faulkner is the project manager and is working closely with the teens, called the “Change Team.”
“It’s all about advocacy,” Faulkner said. “There are no drinking fountains. We want to increase activity here.”
Faulkner cited obesity rates as one of the reasons to increase use of the local park.
The initial grant is being used to monitor the park, survey neighbors about what types of improvements they would like to see at the park – short term and long term – and to do some initial improvements at the park.
“The first grant is for the bathroom to fix the stalls and put in a drinking fountain,” Faulkner said.
Each project selected by the Health Trust relies on policy or environmental change to improve health in a local community.
“We are so pleased to support these strategic and creative efforts to improve the health of residents living in the neighborhoods of Five Wound/Brookwood Terrace, in San Jose, Mayfair, in East San Jose and the city of Hollister,” said Justine Choy, the Health Trust program officer.
The youth alliance is getting help on the project from other community agencies such as First 5 San Benito, the Hollister City Council, Hollister Parks Department, San Benito County supervisors, the Gang Prevention Task Force and the Community Food Bank of San Benito County.
The other goal for the next year is for the Community Food Bank to put in a food stand with healthy snacks.
Members of the County Board of Supervisors have identified some ways they can contribute. Some ideas include replacing the sand in the playground with recycled rubber material and connecting Dunne Park to the Westside/Brigantino Park through a bike/pedestrian lane. Other possibilities Faulkner mentioned for when more funding is available are lights at the tennis courts and a toddler garden area. Another idea is to put in an outdoor theater.
Faulkner, who is a grant writer, is continuing to look for other grant sources for future improvements. She and Diane Ortiz, the executive director of the Hollister Youth Alliance, pointed out that there is not funding available for many of the ideas.
“Clay Lee, (the Hollister community services director,) has been really great about letting us know about restraints, but allowing us to be stewards,” Faulkner said.
Some of the teens working on the project said that they don’t spend much time at Dunne Park.
“When I was smaller I would come down here, but I wouldn’t hang out here now because I don’t feel safe,” Rafael Rojas said.
Samantha Hernandez, the assistant change team youth leader, agreed.
“So far we’ve just seem some negative activity,” Hernandez said. “I feel good I get to be part of the change team. We are trying to make a change in the community.”
One of the activities the pair noticed was a vendor selling churros.
Faulkner mentioned that the food stand could sell healthier snacks, such as jicama with chile.
“We want to put the candy man out of business,” she said.
After the monitoring and surveys of neighbors are complete, Hernandez and Anaid Godoy, the change team youth leader, will present their findings to representatives from the different groups involved with the project.
Faulkner said when she worked with the Public Health Department on the car seat check-up, two teen moms worked with her and she was impressed by how hard they worked.
“It made me think about how vulnerable children can be,” she said. “I thought this would be a great teen job if we could work around their schedules.”
Faulkner said there are positive qualities at Dunne Park, if they can be harnessed. The park includes a clubhouse, tennis courts, a baseball diamond, a playground, open spaces and a barbecue area.
“This is the first neighborhood (in Hollister),” she said. “It’s the oldest of the twelve parks. It’s something that can’t be recreated in new parks.”
Ortiz added it’s proximity to downtown as another asset.
“It’s close to schools,” Ortiz said. “We really want to make it vibrant. For me it’s a real park.”
As part of the monitoring, the change team will go out at the midway point of the 16 months and again at the end to review activity in the park. The hope is that positive activities will increase over time while negative activities decrease.
“We are thinking of it as a mini-intervention,” Faulkner said. “We want to stick with it for 16 months and make it easy to sustain.”
