We had a pretty good turn out June 24th at our DCTMI Neighborhood Field Day at Meridian Hill Park. We gathered around 30 people to our event and signed up 10 volunteers to be tutors or mentors.
We are thankful the rain cleared up in time for our event. The rain would have put a damper on our recruiting efforts, pun intended.
Although the event didn’t plan out as scheduled, everyone had a great time playing soccer and Frisbee and eating the tasty food spread. We were happy to see parents bring out their young children out to enjoy themselves. Even though it wasn’t a big crowd, we were able to get our message out to the parents, as well as people walking their dogs or other passersby.
As this was our first event, we are still learning how we can bring a mixture of different age groups to our Field Days. We attracted the family group with our different sporting activities, but would like to reach out to young adults and adults. For our upcoming Neighborhood Field Days, we plan to bring more activities that will entice other generations. Hosting live music and food trucks at our events might increase the attendance number of teenagers and young adults. Yoga sessions will hopefully bring out the adult crowd.
DCTMI would like to thank everyone who came out to our Field Day, especially Capoeira Fitness DC for their Brazilian dance fighting demonstration and music. It was what Brazilians call “espetacular.” We also want to thank Emily Grassett and Anna Hodges from MINT DC for coming out. We hope we can work with these groups for future DCTMI events.
Thanks to the National Park Service for supporting our event at this beautiful, historic park. Many of the people who showed up for the event said that Meridian Hill Park was a great venue; it is perfect for kids to run around and for adults to hang out or exercise.
The Field Days are a great way to bring everyone together to exercise and enjoy the outdoors. Hopefully by bringing the community together, we can recruit more tutoring and mentoring volunteers to change the lives of kids in the DC community.