From the Director: Be a Part of Something Big
This Saturday is National Public Lands Day, the nation’s largest, single-day volunteer effort for public lands. The purpose: to connect people to public lands in their community, inspire environmental stewardship, and encourage use of public lands. FOW will join the effort by sponsoring a workday in Wissahickon Valley Park on September 24.
Public lands are what often helps to foster quality of life, especially in urban areas. The Wissahickon has been essential to the preservation of the quality of the neighborhoods in northwest Philadelphia and has performed a variety of functions, from cleaning our water and our air to stabilizing our real estate market.
You really can’t overestimate the value of positive well-cared-for green spaces and their impact on the health of a community in an urban setting. As important as our national and state parks are, smaller parcels surrounded by so many people actually have more day-to-day meaning in people’s lives.
by Maura McCarthy, Executive Director