What to Watch: Brief but Spectacular Take on How a DC Park Heals a Community

By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr

Akiima Price, founder of the Friends of Anacostia Park in Washington, DC, has dedicated her life to getting people outdoors. In this 3-minute PBS NewsHour Brief but Spectacular video she discusses the impact a local park has on her under-resourced community. This is particularly poignant for me because I grew up without such a “village” so I love when people create villages for themselves!

Akiima Price shares:
“I would ultimately like to establish this park as a trauma-informed park that has models and systems that can be replicated and shared in other places. To where it’s really seen as a clinic, whether you’re using the space for a restorative justice circle or you’re having court-mandated mental health happen in the form of a hike.

“When I’m in Anacostia Park, I feel peace. I hear children laughing, I hear people on the basketball court, I smell cookouts,” says Akiima Price. Credit: PBS Newshour

“I know there are people who have shared with me that use that bike path that have gotten off their blood pressure medicine and their diabetes medicine.

“I’ve met people who are going through drug addiction, you know, trying to get clean, and how just being in that park, the stillness and the silence of that park is helpful, and the fact that there are people that they can talk to.

“Easily over a million people use Anacostia Park over the course of a year. The majority of the people that use that park are African Americans, so the park gets a lot of use in a cultural context,” shares Akiima Price. Credit: PBS Newshour

“What we’re about is not just the park, but the people. That park feels like that’s my family, the elders feel like my grandmas and then having our staff there and having all these people working and then bringing their kids. It feels like a village.”

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