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Sometimes to move forward, we must step back. Most of us in the park and recreation field, I believe, are here because we trust in the importance and benefit of recreational opportunities for community members. So, it only follows that we should be looking at how accessible our programs are to everyone in our communities.

Newburyport is a small city on the coast of northern Massachusetts with a population of 18,000. Today, it is seen as an affluent, predominantly white community. However, there is a real dichotomy in the city between the façade of wealth and race and the reality of who lives here. Many communities like this, where people say, “we have no diversity,” contribute to the perceived invisibility of non-dominant groups, and it benefits no one to allow this to be the standard way of thinking.

Taking Another Look

As a department, Newburyport Youth Services had to take a step back and look at which groups of community members were possibly not feeling “invited” to our programming. What groups may not have believed our events and activities were for them? We took a hard look and began to identify several underrepresented groups: non-English-speaking parents, families of children with special needs, LGBTQ+ individuals and families needing financial assistance. Once we identified these groups, we reviewed our policies and procedures to look for areas in which we could improve. We looked primarily at marketing and outreach, as well as our registration policies.

What We Found

Marketing and outreach

• All our email outreach was in English.
• Our website and registration software could be translated, but the Google Translate button was hidden at the bottom of the webpages.
• We always listed our policy on financial aid, but the language was hidden in our activity guide.
• We always stated that our programs are accessible to all and accommodations will be made, but the language also was hidden in our activity guide.

Registration policies

• We previously had changed all our paperwork and registration information to replace mentions of “mom and dad” with “parent or guardian,” but we had not updated our language around pronouns of participants.
• Requiring families to contact us for scholarships or financial aid often meant those families missed out on spots in programs that filled fast.
• Summer registration traditionally started at 9 a.m., a time when many are working and unable to claim spots in programs that fill quickly.

What We Did

More direct outreach – We partnered with schools and other local agencies to reach some of these groups more directly through their mailing lists. For example, we were able to have the schools send an email blast to all families who receive free and reduced-price lunches with information about our new policies for registration. We also worked with holiday programs that had mailing lists of families from this past winter who needed financial assistance. Our information was sent to those families in their primary language. We also sent information to parents of students with special needs.

Equity in registration – We created a promo code that allowed any family who was requesting assistance to register for programs without payment. Here were the steps:

• We reached out to families about the new procedure and shared information on who to contact before registration began.
• Families called, texted — which we learned works well for using translation tools — or emailed to receive a code. This step allowed us to check in and see if they had any other needs we should know about.
• Registration opened and families signed up, then we followed up and determined how much they could afford and how much assistance they required and confirmed their registration.

Easier access to registration – We changed our registration time to 6 p.m. and asked staff to switch their hours to provide two hours of in-person registration and answer calls.

Reflecting the true diversity in community – We reached out to our local school department and asked if they had a list of all the languages families speak in their homes as listed on their registrations. For a community with “no diversity,” we were shocked to receive a list of 26 languages. So, we included them all on our activity guide cover.

Increasing inclusion – When we met with parents of children with special needs, many said they had no idea their children could participate in our programs. So, we did two things. First, we worked with the schools to promote our programs to families receiving services and clearly stated our commitment to inclusion and accommodations (from nursing to one-on-one support). Second, we worked out a partnership where students who fit the criteria could do some of their extended year (summer school) in our summer programs with aids they already know. This opened the door for us to get to know many families and encourage them to participate in other programs of ours.

Go where the people are – We also recognized that we have earned a great deal of trust in the community by folks who use our programs. How can we ask others to trust blindly? For people, especially parents, to register online for a program they know nothing about with people who they don’t know is a big ask. So, we went to meet them! Our staff hosted two pop-up registration events. One was held at a center we run at an affordable housing development. Then, for the first time, we left flyers all over a local apartment complex, where we know many non-English-speaking families live. The flyer was printed in both English and Portuguese, inviting them to a party with games, pizza and an ice cream truck. We also let them know we would have program information and scholarships available. Lastly, we hired an interpreter to make it easier on families rather than asking their children to act as translators.

We are far from perfect and far from done. However, over the course of a couple years, we have seen all these strategies make a difference. This ongoing work requires a team to look from both near and far and be open to feedback from the community.

Andrea Egmont is Director at Newburyport Youth Services.