What a year we have planned…
We have so many exciting things to share with you. Eastern Madera Recreation and Parks (EMRAP) has been working hard in many different aspects to fulfill our promises and tenants of our three major goals. Centralize Resources, Volunteerism and Grant Writing
Centralized Resources:
We as a nonprofit seek to create a website that provides you centralized resources to all things park and recreation within the community. Currently our community’s main source of advertising is social media and multiple email blasts. We don’t know about you, but some of us feel so inundated that we tend to scroll by or just delete emails without reading them. With social media, the number one thing we hear is “Oh I didn’t see that on Facebook”. That is because the algorithms coordinate what and when you see things. We feel this is not conducive to building strong community ties based in real time. We need that ability to say what’s happening in the community this week, and have access to all volunteerism resources, all programing resources and all event resources. Preferably without a peanut gallery of commentary.
On our website we have a variety of pages that provide you with access to programing, calendars of events, and to volunteer opportunities. We have pages to the local sport leagues, the community centers, the parks and the national forest. We have links to businesses in town that offer classes to our community, even better we have tried to break those resources down by community. We have been working on our website to add ways to connect with all these resources, by linking their website and working on building positive connections with them all. So please look through the website, see if the design, layout and resources are user friendly. Always feel free to give us constructive feedback. A good community site is only good if it serves its purpose, easy and accessible community resources. Also, there will always be something we have missed, so send us things you feel should be added and we will investigate them. Our goal is to start hearing, “Oh I found this great program on the rec and park website!” or “Our friends signed up for this great class, check out the rec and parks pages for the information.” We want to be a stable centralized information resource for the community.
Volunteerism:
This last year has seen our nonprofit do an epic amount of volunteerism with the EMRAP Volunteer Coalition! Follow us on Facebook or check out the volunteer page on our website for the upcoming ways to get involved.
We have done our hands on Community Spring Clean with multiple facilities in the community. Helping Fresno Flats with clean-up days, supporting Oakhurst River Parkway Trails with multiple trail clean-up and maintenance days and even a few helping hands at the Oakhurst Community Center and Bass Lake clean-up days. We have been helping hands at many Fresno Flats Markets, the Fresno Flats Heritage Day and Fresno Flats Christmas Faire. We have supported the chamber’s Fall Festival, making sure that Recreation and Park based nonprofits had representation and the community has access to their questions about these facilities.
We have also volunteered with many local nonprofit boards such as the Oakhurst Community Center, Fresno Flats, Coarsegold Community Center and most recently the Eastern Madera County Foundation board. All with the goal of strengthening connectivity between these nonprofits, but also providing as much access to community resources such as physical and educational programming, more community-minded events and looking towards new ways to utilize our recreation facilities.
Currently we host programming classes at the Oakhurst Community Center and Coarsegold Community Center. Our classes are designed for the facility that they are being held at, so EMRAP retains no funds. We volunteer to be the coordinators, advertisers and the booking source for the facilities. The classes are all structured around the idea that we pay our teachers a flat rate fee and then all remaining funds go to the facility that the class is hosted at. So, when you take a class with EMRAP you are supporting local instructors and the Community Center where you are taking your class. We want our community to take pride in the knowledge that even if they can’t donate extra money, simply taking that yoga class or putting your child in the art class means you are financially supporting our community facilities!
Another way to support our community facilities is through our Music in the Park Summer Series, the fund collected from this event serve to pay for the event itself and go to EMRAP to cover the costs we need to advertise to the community. We are happy to say, we have a wonderful Music in the Park Summer Series Planned for this year! Check it out!
Also, we will be releasing a new program, our main target for this program is our tourism! We want their money going directly into nonprofits! Not shipped down the hill in tourism taxes. With that in mind we have created our EMRAP Eats Program with the undying support of our favorite partner, North Fork BBQ! EMRAP Eats food truck event will take place on the second Friday of every month during the summer months. Each month we will highlight a nonprofit, focusing on how they support the community, the programs they offer and the events they host. All funds collected will then go directly to that nonprofit to continue to service our community and maintain their facilities.
Some other things to keep an eye out for as we continue to build programs and events for the community will be our Mountain Gardening Series which starts this February.
Community Center Youth Art Galleries, both in Oakhurst and Coarsegold! We have Started displaying our Kids Art Class Art monthly and will soon expand to art sourced from any our community’s local youth artists! We have had a wonderful senior from the High School connect with us, she will be developing our first Youth Art Gallery for her senior project. The gallery will host an opening on Valentine’s Weekend! So, keep your eyes out for the details! Also, we have had local fitness instructor Sarrah Hubble of The Nutrition and Fitness Hubb connect with us about coordinating an annual Turkey Trot!
Grant Writing:
As of January 11th, we have officially submitted our grant for the Prop 68 Regional Park! We have asked for all $3 million dollars so we can clean-up the waterways, install solar lighting, build an amphitheater, rehabilitate the bathrooms and add to the play equipment, construct a new pavilion and 10,000 sq foot skate park as well as add a coffee shop and gear rental shop in the heart of the park! Gaining the support and informing the community of our plans has been a yearlong, uphill task and we are so proud to have been able to do this for our community. Now We Wait. Grant Awards will be announced in the spring, once we get the grant, we will be full steam ahead with our construction plans and will update you then! Keep an eye out on our website and social media pages for the site plan of the park to be released in the next few weeks.
Here are just a few sneak peak of some of the first draft renderings of what we are looking to accomplish!
*Remember these are just first draft renderings of what we are aiming for, as we continue to develop, have discussions about design and go through permitting things will change.
We hope you will support us in 2022 by coming out to our events, signing up for our classes and programs or just making a donation.
Thank you