Sunday Parkways has been partnering up with the ABC Group, a Latino American focused transportation advocacy group who holds a Bi-lingual Bike Fair at Sunday Parkways. They are not only able to provide an array of helpful information on bike safety to attendees in English and Spanish, but also provide free bike wrenching – and they bring out people that we could not reach. For our side of the partnership, we provide a high visibility platform for them, get the word out about them via our communication outlets, and we help behind the scene in helping them to get the grant to financially support their work.

Working with the Latino Network last year, we were struck by the words of their staff Justinian. He noted that people needed to know they could find others who can speak their language at the event. We knew that community based partnerships could make this possible.

Over the last three years, our partnership with Som Subedi of Portland Parks and Recreation has really fostered the community relationship and enabled us to gather community feedback on what the immigrant and refugee communities want to see and do at Sunday Parkways.

In celebration of our New Portlander community, Parks for New Portlanders partnered up with Sunday Parkways to organize a Walk with Refugees and Immigrants. Over 150 community members and elected leaders gathered at the East Portland Neighborhood Office and participated in a one-mile walk alongside our refugee and immigrant neighborhoods in a show of support. In partnership with refugee and immigrant organizations, this event recognized the unique experiences and contributions of new Portlanders, of all ages and backgrounds, including honoring seniors and providing school supplies for children.

The evolution of our event has primarily moved from us learning how to identify, understand, and reach out to the immigrant and refugee communities – to working with our trusted partners to develop the people part and have us work on connecting these communities to our events and the City.

In our foundation years, we worked to:

Identify our target communities and their leaders

Understand their stories and learn to connect

Establish foundational partnerships

We are currently at the stage where we are:

Make lasting partnerships

Work to provide financially or other types of support to communities

Incorporate new community based initiatives into Sunday Parkways