Preparing Community-Based Organizations with Media Advocacy Skills to Advance Green Space Equity

Parks, playgrounds, walking trails and other green spaces are integral to the health of communities: they provide community members with safe places to exercise, opportunities to socialize and engage with others, and connect to the outdoors. This allows for increased physical activity opportunities, mental health benefits and other health advantages.

Today, many communities lack access to adequate green spaces, due to historical and ongoing racist and exclusionary practices such as segregation and redlining. Through the People, Parks and Power (P3) project, PHI’s Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG) is giving local advocates the strategic communications and messaging tools they need to promote green space equity in communities across the country.

P3 is a national power building and organizing project that is engaging local communities across the country to address inequities in access to parks and green spaces. The project aims to advance green space equity in three key areas: procedural, distributional and structural equity to ensure that communities are involved from the beginning in decision-making processes, in the allocation of resources, and representation in organizations in power. P3 is a joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, led by Prevention Institute and supported by BMSG and other partners.

The 2023 inaugural cohort of funded organizations represents Black, Latinx and/or Indigenous communities located in Santa Rosa, CA; Oxnard, CA; Austin, TX; Santa Fe, NM; Phoenix, Arizona; San Juan, PR; South Bronx, NY; Minneapolis, MN; Las Vegas, NV; Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, CA; Springfield, OH; and New Orleans, LA. 

During 2023, BMSG worked closely with the initiative’s grantees to promote green space equity by providing strategic communication and technical assistance. BMSG offered two training sessions to 50 participants on the introduction to media advocacy and a spokesperson training. BMSG also met with the local community-based partners in small groups and individually, sharing tailored communication and media advocacy advice. 

The P3 grantee organizations now have increased strategic communication skills to bring to grassroots campaigns and media advocacy work—ultimately helping communities to improve equitable access to green spaces in their neighborhoods.