WPF Pod Ep. 1: The Difference You Make Launch and Guest Jon Chattman

The WPF Executive Director Joe Stout discusses the organization, its mission, the launch of its podcast, and welcomes first guest Jon Chattman, the Foundation’s director of content and outreach.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

So, welcome to The Difference You Make, the Westchester Parks Foundation's podcast celebrating the people, partnerships, and the purpose behind the parks we love and the impact that you and guys like him help create on all of our parks. I'm Joe Stad, I'm the executive director of the Westchester Parks Foundation. If you've ever gone to a county park, gone for a walk, watch the kids play, run, playground, swim, go to a county golf course, go to the county center, go to playland. You've been in a Westchester County park. And those things are important to you. This is the show where you find out more about those kinds of things, but also on the impact that you have as a user, as an advocate, hopefully as a donor, hopefully as a volunteer someday. And we'll talk to folks who work in parks, we'll talk to folks who use their parks. We want your stories to be how important parks are to you, and then how you can help us keep them, make them better, and do the the kinds of things that are important to all of us. This is John Chapman. John is uh he's uh in addition to being the uh uh my guest today, uh he's our director of content and sponsorship, or something like that is his title. But he goes out and finds folks to help us, and he does our social media and and and promotional things. So he's uh he's our podcast director, and and he's also a big park user and uh got kids that use parks, and and you know, he knows the value of what we do and why parks matter. Westchester Parks Foundation has carved out a niche in the world where we help people who don't have the same opportunities get to access our great parks, whether that's through um free or low-cost programming that we sponsor, raise money for to sponsor, whether that's uh with now the award-winning Trails Without Limits program, uh go to our website, the WPF.org, and check it out. It is a great program. It's uh motorized wheelchairs with tank treads on them, so folks can go on hikes in the woods with their families, people that have mobility challenges, that that uh either never had the opportunity or got hurt and now uh can go back and do uh the things they love in nature. We have a sleepaway camp for kids that are wards of Westchester County, homeless shelter kids, kids that are in foster care or child protective services. So, you know, not everybody has the same opportunities that like John, you and I have. They're important places for people to be able to get without restriction, and that's what we do here on a regular basis. So tell me just a little bit about like where you grew up, how did you wind up in county parks and why they're important to you and your family?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Um I grew up in Yonkers. Um I grew up where Tibbets didn't have all the amenities. Uh by the way, just side note the pool is fantastic. Yes, it is. Um I was in through quite a shock a couple of years ago when we were doing Duck Derby. How amazing the pool is with the lazy river and everything. Um the only thing lazy growing up uh at Tibbitz was me. Um but yeah, no, I grew up in Yonkers and um always outdoors. Play baseball. Um me, my sister, my parents, always outdoors.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah, and and so so you know that's an important piece of of why parks matter, right? It's mental health, it's physical health, it's it's connection to the environment. Parks are also a big part of uh climate uh resiliency for Westchester. If if you live here or work here, you know that storms come more frequently and flooding is an issue, and there's 18,000 acres of just county-owned parks that help combat that, um, in addition to all the trees and the carbon offsets and all the good things that happen there. Um but but what we like to say is that parks are are other than like your family and your friends and your cousin, people's earliest memories most likely happened in a park. You know, you went with your family, somebody took you to a swing, or you went for a picnic, or you did that in a park. And those are life memories that are important to connecting to the value of parks to your family today. Um, you know, it's neighbors meeting neighbors, it's kids learning, it's curiosity, it's volunteers showing up and giving back, right? Or are we working out taglines here, but we've kind of come down on parks give a lot, give a little back. Uh because they do. They they they give us a lot, all kinds of things, but mostly they're places where everybody's welcome. And you know, I don't know if John has, you know, got some kind of issue going on in his life, or I have some kind of a problem going on in my life, or I, you know, I'm homeless, or I have an illness, or I got some bad news, or I have some chop. Nobody knows because everybody's welcome and you can go and they're low cost. So that's where we fit into the world, right? Westchester County Parks Department and the County, excuse me, they operate the parks. We don't do that, right? So they handle the ascent, they do maintenance, they take care of safety, and and the the Westchester County Park System is one of the safest in the country. And and um the county executive would be very upset if I did not say it was the award-winning nationally accredited Westchester County Park System. Our park system is one of only a couple of hundred in the in the country that has national accreditation, which means they meet a certain level of uh professional competency that has been recognized by an accrediting agency. Um, and it's not an easy process to go through. But they take care of all of that stuff. They do the great recreation programs. Um, you know, we help pay for them, but they actually run them. And they do the long-term planning that ensures that the parks are here for generations. And a big part of what we do is to help them do that, but also advocate to the folks, like the Board of Legislators and the County Executive's office, to make sure that the parks get the same resources that they need in order to keep them as good as they are today and even make them better. As you know, because your job is to go out and find folks that are willing to support us financially through sponsorships, is we add value, right? The county keeps the parks running, we help them thrive, right? We fund and fuel and scale projects that uh lift parks from great to unforgettable, the extras that public funding always can't cover, right? Trail improvements, environmental initiatives, youth and education programs, volunteer days, and signature events. We're really proud of Winter Wonderland, Westchester's Winter Wonderland. We sponsor that uh with our corporate partners and the Parks Department produces it. Uh but you know, this stuff wouldn't happen if we weren't here. That's a signature program. The July 3rd Music Fest is a signature program that the Parks Foundation has been sponsoring for decades with the music and games and fireworks at Kensico Dan Plaza on July 3rd. So those kinds of things are the added pieces of of what we do versus what the county does. And it's like, you know, we hear all the time, well, I pay my taxes, why do I have to donate to you or what I have to give you my time or whatever? Because there's never enough hands to do everything and there's never enough money to cover everything. And we fill that gap of of you know making things better. When our volunteers go out there and, you know, literally put on waiters and go into the Bronx River and pull out tons, when I say tons, of garbage and floatables, the things that people throw out their windows, or it just blows on a uh you know, on a on a garbage collection or a recycling day, it winds up, it winds up in the river, and we have volunteers and staff that actually go into the river and pull that stuff out. So it's kind of like a it's a cool thing to be able to do, but that's the difference between what we do, what the county does, and the difference that folks make like you by by volunteering, by donating, by picking up the phone and talking to your county legislator and saying, these parks are important to me and my family, make sure that they're maintained, make sure that they're safe, make sure that they have the resources. They're as important to um us as any other service that that the county provides. You know, we had talked about this a couple of times with the rest of the staff here, which I think is important, is is we don't raise money, right, to to house the homeless. We don't raise money to feed the hungry, we don't raise money to help cure cancer, we don't raise money for veterans, we don't raise money for domestic abuse victims, but all of those people go to a park, right? And so so when when when when you support county parks, um either through advocacy or volunteering or donating, you really can support all of those other causes because the people who are uh benefiting by those great other not-for-profits in Westchester County, they all use our park system.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah, I mean I think with pars, you kind of take it for granted because they're always here. You know, and I know for me COVID was a real turning point for me. Um and everyone, right? But um that's when I was going to the parks a lot, like everybody. Yeah, because there was no place else to go. Right. I um I learned to ride a bike for the first time ever during COVID. Wow. I I never I I my dad tried and failed and was like, I'm done with you. Um and I was like, got nothing else to do. I'll I went to our park and taught myself how to ride a bike, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

So an interesting, an interesting sidebar to all of that, John, is that a lot of the park system originally was built in the early 1900s in response to the Spanish flu for having safe outdoor spaces for people to go to so that they weren't contagious with everybody. And and the Parks Foundation was very publicly supportive of then County Executive George Latimer's decision to keep Westchester County parks open because they even local parks were not open for a while because everybody didn't know what the hell was going on. So he made what what I thought was a politically um because there were people coming at him saying you shouldn't, but he said, we're gonna do it. Bicycle Sundays was open, all of our parks were open, social distancing was done. I think the parks department did a remarkable job, but a lot of people were like you. They couldn't go to the gym, they couldn't go to their private clubs. They discovered the value of the county parks that were here.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I met my trainer at Kensiko Dam and whatever it was, uh six feet apart, right? Whatever it was. It was distant training at Kensico. Right. Um and and we did that. But I think um it kind of the way that I look at parks and everything is like you can't put a price tag on like peace of mind, right? And and that's how I I look at it, and you know, I'm I'm kind of in the trenches a lot trying to get money for us, and I always say that. Like you you can't self-care always comes last, right? And for me, I do two things. I try to get sponsorship money for us, and I do our social media. And the escape for me from social media is going to be. Because there's so much noise. Noise, right? And to escape the noise, the only time I really allow myself to escape the noise is going to the gym or going to the city.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Going to the park. Yeah, and there's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of our fellow residents who do the same thing every day. And and so your role in all of this is, you know, we'd like you to give us your time, your talent, and you know, sometimes we'd like you to write a check too, right? You can volunteer, you can donate, spread the word about both the parks foundation and its role, and the county parks, and and how they help you get through your daily uh day, and and and and and you know, how they help you um with your peace of mind or your fitness or your um you know family time that's that's less stressful. So we hope to do this a couple of times a month starting uh uh today, and and you know, going ahead, we'll go behind the scenes at some parks so you kind of see, and it's getting almost getting to be nice weather, and the parks department will start working on their pools. You know, the the county has pools. I mean, when you talk about pools, you just Tibbetts is a is a used example. Maybe we'll go to Tibbetts and we'll let the folks there show you what it takes to get that park ready and open for the summer season, or at a golf course, which is open now, or even at a nature center where where there's not the same kind of of you know intense maintenance, but it still takes some effort to get stuff done and go behind the scenes. We'll bring some donors in. But we'd like to also hear from you if there's something specific that you'd like us to talk about or bring in someone to ask questions on, uh, you know, please the wpf.org or info at the WPF.org and we'll get those and we'll talk about them and hope to see you guys around. So subscribe to the difference you make, right? Volunteer or donate and share your park story. You know, you can find it at info at the WPF.org. Share your park story. John will pick it up, and you know, maybe you'll come in and you'll be able to interview, we'll interview you on uh why parks are important to you and your family or your business or or why you choose to live in Westchester and stay in Westchester. So thanks for your support over all the time that you have. If you are one of our supporters, please subscribe to our podcast and um tell us what you think. And we're looking forward to meeting all of you. Thanks.