If you have been keeping up with your reading on YouthforCarFreeParks.org, you know the Prospect Park Youth Advocates were recently filmed by NY1 News. If you haven't seen it yet, I would like to present the Prospect Park Youth Advocates television debut. Check it out!
On August 19th, my fellow Youth Advocates and I set out on another grueling hot day in the park. Farah and I met up with our manager and discussed our plans for the day. Farah, full of charm and professionalism, took on the task of calling Tupper Thomas, Administrator of Prospect Park and President of the Prospect Park Alliance, to ask if she would meet with us to hear about what we have been doing in the park all summer. We were able to schedule a meeting and are looking forward to telling the woman in charge all about our work. We'll be sure to tell all you readers about it when it happens. It was also a big day for our wonderful supervisor; her birthday. She turned 25 and wanted a special present from us. Each of us had to get 100 postcards signed by the end of the day.
Since such a very hard task had been assigned, we decided to work the Loop Drive and then cut across the Center Drive, where we expected we would see the most people in the late August city heat. It was a slow and grueling process and we were exhausted before the day was half over. At around 3pm we meet up with Oswald and told him about the challenge. He was skeptical but both Farah and I knew that if anybody could find 100 supporters of a car-free park in one day, it was Oswald. He is an absolute monster when it comes to tracking down supporters in the huge 526-acre park.
So the three of us worked our way through the Long Meadow and then split up in hopes of covering more ground, and discussing our campaign with more park-goers. When we met back up at about 6:30, only one person met the quota and it wasn't who we expected it to be. We met back up with Jessie at exactly 6:45 and handed her our postcards. Oswald had 60, I had 59 and Farah had 100. She was the only one that beat the challenge. After a hard grueling day in the park, we were all relieved to finally be going home.
