Read how Dallas Park and Recreation created a summer of fun!

With innovation, originality, and technology, Dallas Park and Recreation adapted traditional leisure activities and put them online. We continued to deliver essential services to communities to help them cope with new lifestyle normals.

Here’s a recap of how our Recreation Services and Visitor Experience and Community Engagement divisions addressed ongoing social, economic, and health challenges and made summer 2020 a virtual reality for Dallas families!

Free Rec@Home virtual camps kept kids of all ages busy crafting, creating, cooking and more! For five weeks, energetic camp leaders inspired 150 youth in fun-friendly arts, crafts, sports, cooking, science, trivia and recreational activities. … Water Safety Wednesdays presented by Dallas Aquatics offered tips for staying safe in and around pools, lakes and other bodies of water. The sessions - held twice daily for four weeks - averaged 25 participants.

Robotics and virtual reality technology camps stretched the imaginations of 97 young techies with free hands-on instruction from experts and educators. Robotics class campers each received an Ozobot robot -valued at $99 - to aid them in learning basic coding. The virtual reality camp balanced an hour of live instruction with peer interaction. The weeklong camps gave campers 20 hours of useful project-based activities.

At the Teen Tech Center, Engineer for the Week (EFTW) demystified technology with project-based learning activities focusing on current social issues. Future engineers created a page chatbot that offered COVID-19 info from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rec@Home videos offered 24-hour fun-on-demand activities.  In-house production of more than 40 videos provide step-by-step demos for fitness, family games, arts, crafts, healthy snacks and special interest topics. New videos are posted weekly on DallasParks.org and social media. Videos designed for seniors included bingo, sit and fit, name that tune, random topics, and motivation Monday. …  Forty-eight individuals with disabilities used Facebook to enjoy 12 weeks of daily online recreation with Bachman Recreation Center. Therapeutic recreation staff devoted 120 hours to create content, record, edit and star in activity videos that highlighted fitness, music, reading, trivia, art, America Sign Language and more.

Twenty-five employees cut, pinned, sewed, pressed and assembled 5,000 masks with fabrics/materials donated by the American Sewing Guild, local fabric and craft stores and caring individuals. Heat-pressed vinyl decals of the park department logo personalized the masks. Residents picked up masks - personalized with the department's logo - at drive-thru distribution stations at 40 recreation centers. The Senior Program Division outfitted an additional 1,000 seniors with masks.

Thirty-three recreation centers provided Grab ’n Go meals for  youth up to 18, serving more than 50 breakfast/lunch combos on weekdays for two months. The Senior Program Division joined Dallas County Nutrition to provide hot meals to 415 senior adults at four recreation centers. … Popsicles in the Park popped up at neighborhood parks to serve frozen treats to more than 500 senior adults. The drive-thru event featured music and entertainment by the Office of Arts and Culture. … Nine recreation centers distributed 1,000 free DIY Rec@Home kits containing supplies for arts and crafts supplies, games for family or individual play, craft ideas booklet and a  science project using household items. … DART provided transportation to help Senior Program staff deliver 800 care packages filled with snacks, sanitizer, water, coloring books & more to Dallas’ most treasured residents.

We supported outreach efforts of other organizations and agencies when 60 employees telephoned 2,000 residents for the 2020 Census while other staff assisted each week with packing and loading items at the Harmony Food Pantry in Oak Cliff.

Recreation Services supported our Park Rangers as park monitors to remind park and trail users to practice social distancing. More than 300 employees worked 1,136 shifts and 5,308 hours to ensure visitors played by the (safety) rules. As playgrounds and park amenities reopened, Play It Safe In Dallas Parks awareness campaign kicked off with a safety video from the Park Rangers. … The newly launched Trailblazers offered insights into city trails with blog posts written by novice and avid trail users who share their trail experiences with safety tips, photos and videos.

Before 35 recreation centers reopened, specially designed training gave employees a greater understanding of new safety protocols they needed to return to work. The virtual training outlined staff expectations at work, participant/visitors’ expectations in park facilities, and best practices for staff and patron interactions. More than 400 employees attended one of five hour-long trainings offered in English and Spanish. See Welcome Back to the Rec video here. To view in Spanish, click here.

During National Water Safety Month, the Dallas Aquatics Water Safety Challenge featured interactive videos in English and Spanish to guide viewers through a series of safety scenarios. The lessons had more than 16,000 views on social media and on Dallas Independent School District’s At-Home Learning webpage for PK-6 teachers and students.

We celebrated July is Park and Recreation Month with our in-house production of We Are Parks and Recreation to showcase Dallas' park and recreation  professionals. In addition to the video, photos/profiles of 31 employees sharing sentiments about what it means to work in parks and recreation were featured every day in July on social media and DallasParks.org.