State Park Promotorx

Green space, park access, and trees

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

In their operations and programmatic offerings, State Parks have not always been adequately responsive, welcoming, and accessible to the residents that they were meant to serve. While State Parks solicited significant community input during LA State Historic Park’s founding, and the park is a key regional asset and concert venue, we still need ways for this “front porch of LA” urban green space in a historically park poor area to stay responsive to the surrounding communities' evolving needs, and address potential barriers to participation. Such barriers include park uses/programs seen as incompatible with residents’ wishes, the park seeming unwelcoming, missing park infrastructure such as crosswalks, and encroachment from development. The fact that a park exists doesn’t mean that it will provide the well-documented health benefits to neighbors if it is not well used by them. The Promotorx work to remedy this problem, connecting to regional efforts at shared visions for parks.

Based on the promotora health sector model of trusted neighbor-to-neighbor resource sharing, Promotorx in a park setting help foster local engagement with parks by sharing information within their networks and communities, and providing valuable feedback to staff on community desires, needs, and potential barriers to visitorship. Begun in 2017 with the opening of LASHP but paused during Covid, the program relaunched in 2023 with 13 Promotorx, ages 18-30, from the park-adjacent neighborhoods of Chinatown, Mission Junction, and Lincoln Heights. The Promotorx meet monthly and keep office hours at LASHP’s Welcome Pavilion. They shadow park staff across programs, from food distribution with Chinatown seniors to habitat restoration. Promotorx also assist with community partners’ events like the annual Kite Festival, and are creating their own culminating public program, Brunch in the Park, celebrating the area’s diverse food cultures. Promotorx enjoy career enhancement and training opportunities, including printmaking with Self-Help Graphics, an introduction to State Parks hiring, and the highly transferable Certified Interpretive Guide (CIG) training.
For the upcoming 2024-25 service year, the Promotorx will also hold seats on the planned Community Advisory Council for LASHP, lending their voices to this new steering body that will provide input on the mix of uses and programs at the park, in the tradition of the original Chinatown Yard Alliance and Cornfield Advisory Committee.

Success would be an annual cohort of 10 Promotorx serving park staff, visitors, and their communities, while gaining knowledge, experiences, and job skills. Participants would feel deeply rooted in place, absorbing the parks’ cultural and natural histories, sharing their knowledge, and fostering communal stewardship of our public lands. Some Promotorx would find careers in parks or related nonprofits, or become long-term park volunteers and supporters.
The program would be financially sustainable, well-supported by park staff, and well known within our communities. Together, the Promotorx and the new Community Advisory Council being planned with CD1, would serve as a model for urban parks countywide, demonstrating how investments in sustained community engagement can bolster both park operations and community participation, and attract new investments. It will also be a model for balancing the regional and even statewide benefits of parks like LASHP with local needs and benefits.

We measure impact via year-end program evaluations and interviews, but also by the lasting relationships that have been built, strengthening staff’s trust within adjacent communities. Some original Promotorx are still very engaged, raising community issues to park staff and supporting park programming. Among them is Xochitl Mazanilla, a resident of nearby William Mead Homes public housing complex. Xochitl served in the original 2016 cohort and has remained active at the park, volunteering when needed and hosting walking programs and her bi-monthly Art in the Park, a treasured free community art class now in its seventh year. The skills she gained as a promatora translated into now representing William Mead on the Historic Cultural North Neighborhood Council. Xochilt is our evidence of success and the growing significance of the Promotorx Program within the community network. We also plan to track alumni via an annual survey to follow their career paths and ongoing park engagement.