Letter from YASG Program Coordinator
Park restoration and parkour event at Skyway Park. Photo cedit: King County Parks, Eli Brownell
Hey all!
For those unfamiliar with who I am, my name is Dan Dye. I am the Program Coordinator for the Youth and Amateur Sports Grant (YASG) that Parkour Visions received in September 2021.
After being selected for the position, the PKV team and I began to look at ways to use the grant to connect with low-income and communities of color in Seattle. After months of outreach and with the help of our community members, we have fostered some really awesome connections. Here are some of the organizations we’ve collaborated with:
Rising Star Elementary. Watch our Instagram video!
King County Parks focuses on the maintaining the King County’s park ecosystems and increasing the engagement of community members with the parks. So far, we’ve collaborated with them on two park restoration projects at Skyway Park and White Center Heights Park. Participants enjoyed some parkour fun following the restoration work.
El Centro de la Raza focuses on increasing the access that students and families of all races have to necessary educational and recreational opportunities. We’ve scheduled bi-monthly workshops February through June. We’ve implemented parkour after-school programs for middle schools. And we’re working directly with the youth of Beacon Hill and Federal Way.
Rising Star Elementary is one of Seattle’s Public Schools located in South Beacon Hill. Rising Star is committed to elevating students far from educational justice to success through collaboration and multiple layer learning support. We’ve created two 12-week after-school parkour classes for K-5 in the spring season.
Day of Play workshop with Friends of Waterfront
Friends of Waterfront: Pier 62 is the first piece of the 20-acre Waterfront to open to the public. The Friends of Waterfront work really hard to make sure the Waterfront is a place to be enjoyed by much of Seattle’s diverse communities as possible. We hosted a Day of Play workshop in January for youth and families to enjoy parkour.
Additionally, PKV hopes to solidify partnerships with Renton and Tukwila Schools, Van Asselt Community Center, and Southpark Arts Collective. Working on these projects and partnerships has been such a blast and I look forward to working with PKV to establish more!
If you know of any organizations or communities that could benefit from having parkour programming, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at dandye@parkourvisions.org.