June 2021 - Parks & Recreation - 16

RESEARCH
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
in Parks and Recreation
By Kevin Roth

P

ark and recreation professionals are essential, serving on the front
lines of many of today's most pressing challenges. Given your agency's mission to make communities better places to live, learn, work
and play, you are in a unique position to champion efforts that advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Across the profession, however,
gaps remain in understanding how systemic racism, unfair power structures,
and a lack of cultural competency and humility affect DEI and access to quality park and recreation spaces and programs.
In April, NRPA published a new
report, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Parks and Recreation (nrpa.
org/DEIReport) that highlights the
state of DEI activities at agencies
across the United States. Results
from a 14-question survey present
a snapshot of agency DEI activities
(if any), professional development
opportunities provided to staff, and
the challenges organizations face
in promoting these practices.
The survey found that one in three
park and recreation agencies currently have formal DEI programs,
and another third intend to establish
such activities within the next two
years. Sixty-two percent of agencies
serving more than 100,000 residents
have established formal DEI activities, compared to a quarter of agencies serving 50,000 or fewer people
indicating the same.
Whether or not they have a formal
DEI program, nine in 10 park and
recreation agencies currently have established activities and policies that
promote DEI practices. The most
common DEI activity is the development of hiring practices and policies
(reported by 66 percent of survey
respondents), followed by including
an expressed commitment to DEI

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in foundational documents, such as
vision and mission statements and
strategic plans (50 percent). Other
common DEI activities include:
*	 Staff education/skill development (50 percent)
*	 Professional staff and volunteer
education/skill development on
DEI topics (46 percent)
*	 Community engagement policies
(45 percent)
*	 Recreation programming policies (38 percent)
*	 Contracting and procurement requirements (32 percent)
*	 Volunteer recruitment practices
and policies (25 percent)
Looking to the future, 37 percent of park and recreation leaders
anticipate conducting an equity assessment within the next two years.
Agencies located in more populous
locales are more likely to have conducted a DEI assessment - 17
percent of agencies that serve more
than 100,000 people compared to
just six percent of agencies that
serve fewer than 50,000 people.
The most common methods for
staff DEI education are webinars
and in-person trainings - being offered at 52 percent and 44 percent of
agencies, respectively. Slightly more

than a third of agencies provide staff
with financial support (e.g., tuition,
travel reimbursement) to participate
in external professional development
activities. Topics covered in agencies'
DEI education offerings include:
*	 Implicit bias
*	 Adaptive and inclusive programming
*	 Hiring practices
*	 Equity versus equality
*	 Systematic racism
Park and recreation agencies take
several actions to ensure accountability with their DEI initiatives, including measuring and tracking progress
against goals. Approximately half of
agencies take the following actions
regarding race, ethnicity, gender, disability and income level:
*	 Assess communications and
products for appropriate messaging (55 percent)
*	 Analyze key operational decisions to determine their impact
(52 percent)
*	 Analyze key programmatic decisions to determine their impact
(49 percent)
*	 Incorporate DEI commitment
into new staff and stakeholder
orientation (49 percent)
*	 Collect data on staff and other
stakeholders (e.g., partners, vendors, community) (26 percent)
NRPA is developing and implementing a research-informed professional development and membership
engagement strategy to ensure that
the more than 160,000 full-time park
and recreation professionals, along
with hundreds of thousands of parttime and seasonal workers, stay relevant, adapt to the needs of and reflect
the communities they serve.
Kevin Roth is NRPA's Vice President of
Research, Evaluation and Technology
(kroth@nrpa.org).
https://www.nrpa.org/deireport https://www.nrpa.org/deireport
June 2021 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2021 - Parks & Recreation
