Join the Tea Party Committee to plan for the Nadaka Tea Party Fundraiser to be held Saturday, June 20th. Volunteers are needed for this event and any help is much appreciated. We will be celebrating the Camp Fire Girls of Nadaka.
For more information contact Monica McAllister at 503-956-8558 or monica@friendsofnadaka.org
This is a weekly event occurring on Wednesdays in May (Please RSVP for each date you plan to attend). Children aged 3-5 with their parents are invited to a short story and guided nature walk. Watch birds fly overhead, search for hidden animal homes, and learn about local trees and flowers. Themes change weekly.Event runs rain or shine. $3 admission/donation per child, no charge for adults. Families are welcome to bring a snack. Additional event dates can be found here: Tadpole Tales
Register for this event. Meet at the picnic shelter at Nadaka, NE 176th & NE Glisan.
Everyone invited to attend the Nadaka Festival Committee Meeting to help make plans for the 5th Annual Nadaka Community Festival which will be held on Saturday, August 22nd this year. With the addition of the community garden, nature based play area, covered picnic shelter, etc this promises to be the best Nadaka Festival ever. We need lots of volunteers to make this happen and that means you!
Rain or shine. Come dressed for weather. Help improve Nadaka by removing invasives, trail maintenance and litter removal. Basic plant identification lesson. Work gloves and tools provided. Refreshments for volunteers. Meet at Nadaka picnic shelter next to NE Glisan.
Stewardship Saturdays
Come out to Nadaka Nature Park and enjoy meeting Candace, a former Camp Fire Girl, who will talk about her days at Nadaka as a Camp Fire Girl. Then enjoy a walking tour of Nadaka.
Meet at the picnic shelter near NE Glisan.
Removing invasives and mulching trails at Nadaka. You can preregister for this event at the SOLVE website. Tools and gloves will be provided as well as refreshments for volunteers. Great opportunity to improve Nadaka and make new friends. Registration table located at North entrance, NE 175th & NE Pacific in Gresham.
Official grand opening celebration. Come and see the development of the 2 acre site at the South edge of Nadaka Nature Park. The Audubon Society of Portland’s Education birds will be there together with activities for the whole family and light refreshments.
Lee Dayfield and Jim Labbe
On Saturday April 4th, Gresham residents will celebrate the opening of the new Nadaka Nature Park and Garden. This innovate community park project represents a huge accomplishment in the face of declines in public park investment the last 15 years. The Nadaka experience is a potential model of how we can work together to renew public investment in parks and create healthier and stronger communities in East County. From our vantage, three ingredients were critical to Nadaka’s success.
Nadaka started at the grassroots and the passion of local residents has been essential all along.
First, Nadaka started at the grassroots and the passion of local residents has been essential all along. In 2008, the Friends of Nadaka began organizing clean-ups at the 10-acre Nadaka Open Space. Stewardship days soon became a regular occurrence. Soon a growing list of partners began working to bring two adjacent acres, owned by the Nelson family, into public ownership.
With funding from Metro and East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District (EMSWCD) and a generous donation from the Nelson Family Estate, the acquisition was complete. The acquisition of the Nelson Property on NE Glisan provided access to 600 new households within ½ mile of Nadaka, mostly in Rockwood. This 100% increase in the number of people with local access to Nadaka created a new, more diverse constituency which gathered for the first annual Nadaka Community Festival in 2011.
That same year over 17 organizations signed a Declaration of Cooperation to create the Nadaka Nature Park and Garden Project to ‘Nurture food, families and nature’. Immediate goals were simple: enlist the community to help fund, build and maintain (for at least 5-years) a neighborhood park and community garden while maximizing local job creation and education opportunities.
…the community’s ownership of the project has also been critical for leveraging resources, maximizing community benefits, and keeping things moving.
Making decisions on public parkland like Nadaka require an inclusive and transparent public process. However, the community’s ownership of the project has also been critical for leveraging resources, maximizing community benefits, and keeping things moving. Maintaining this delicate balance remains a second crucial ingredient to Nadaka’s success. Communication, compromise and shared leadership by all parties was key, but the willingness of City leadership- and especially the City Council- to embrace this new community-based approach was essential.
Nadaka is about fostering community, environmental quality, and economic well-being; not just a park.The approach made community development goals central to every project phase. Nadaka is about building community, environmental quality, and economic well-being; not just a park. Improvements have helped create dozens of local jobs and led to youth service-learning projects to enhance access, complete natural resources inventories, and document local history pulling in the time and resources of new Nadaka supporters at every step.
Voter-approved parks and nature funding remains a third essential ingredient of success.
Voter-approved parks and nature funding remains a third essential ingredient of success. If it wasn’t for the voters, Nadaka would never have been protected or improved. Gresham voters led the way in 1990 by passing an Open Spaces Bond Measure, the first in the Metro region. This bond measure leveraged regional, state and federal funds to purchase and permanently protect hundreds of acres of Gresham’s most spectacular parks and natural areas, including the 10-acre Nadaka open space for $500,000 in 1995. Voters passed similar tri-county bond measures in 1995 and 2006 to protect over 14,000 acres of natural area, including the 2-acre Nelson Property that expanded neighborhood access to Nadaka.
77% of the resources ($1.8 million) to create Nadaka Nature Park and Garden came from voter-approved funding measures.
All told, 77% of the resources ($1.8 million) to create Nadaka Nature Park and Garden came from voter-approved funding measures. That includes the $500,000 investment approved by Gresham voters which was leveraged threefold by attracting $1.5 million in other public funding and $278K in private donations and in-kind support. Nadaka demonstrates that local public investment in parks and natural areas in East County can be dramatically leveraged to create on-the-ground results that make our communities healthier, stronger, and more prosperous. Public and private funders are willing to help communities that invest to help themselves.
Nadaka is a success for one neighborhood that can provide example of what East County can do on a broader scale. Estimates indicate that local funding for parks in East County declined by at least 50% the last 15 years while the population grew by 30%. With shared leadership and citizen action and smart investment, years of dwindling park funding can be turned around and the quality of our communities dramatically improved.
Just like Nadaka, the Springwater District concept will take a grass roots advocacy to engage residents in determining investments in their community and supporting new voter-approved investment in the park system.
The proposed concept of a “Springwater Parks and Community District” presents just such an opportunity. This grassroots effort aims to establish a new parks and community development district among willing cities and school districts in East County. Like Nadaka, the Springwater Parks District concept recognizes that access nature is a core community value and essential to our way-of-life. The draft concepts would invest in shared community assets- pools, ball fields, parks, trails and natural areas- to optimize service, leverage outside funds, and attract new investment and jobs. Just like Nadaka, the Springwater District concept will take a grass roots advocacy to engage residents in determining investments in their community and supporting new voter-approved investment in the park system.
We hope East County residents think big about these possibilities in 2015.
Lee Dayfield is the catalyst behind the Friends of Nadaka. Jim Labbe is Urban Conservationist at Audubon Society of Portland and staffs Audubon’s East Branch office at Leach Botanical Garden.
Come register for a plot in the Nadaka Community Garden for only $25/year. Meet your fellow gardeners while enjoying a potluck style meal provided by Friends of Nadaka and Outgrowing Hunger. Open to all community members but is geared toward those with limited access to internet, computers, or who simply have questions about registration and the garden.
Come out to Nadaka on Saturday, April 18th beginning at 9:00am until Noon to participate in the SOLVE cleanup. Go to the SOLVE website to pre-register for this event.
Tools and gloves will be provided as well as refreshments for volunteers. Its a great opportunity to improve Nadaka and make new friends. You will also get a chance to see the new two acre addition to the park which includes a nature based play area, community garden and picnic shelter.