Greetings Fellow Dog Park Supporters!
Over the last few weeks and months, I have talked extensively with numerous individuals and business owners about the dog park fundraising efforts. The good news is that real progress is being made to continually raise awareness, get donations of time and labor, raise funds, and look for and apply for grants to help us reach our fundraising goal.
However, something I believe has not yet been tapped to its full potential and I have heard a decent amount on this front from people who send me messages and comment on my posts – How can I get involved and help this cause besides giving a donation and merely spreading the word?
And so, after consulting with the Great Oak Park Committee Chairman, I am going to create a dog park committee to help me with the numerous dog park efforts I have going on, with the hope of even further expediting the fundraising and planning process. But in order to have a committee, I’ll need people to join it.
I am looking for a variety of different people from different backgrounds, work experiences, and connections to different organizations in the community. I’m looking for people from the mother with kids involved in the PTO who wants to make the town a better place, to the actively involved resident who has run fundraising events for different groups and organizations before, to the senior citizen with a dog who could help spread the word to friends at the Senior Center, to the pet centered business owner wanting to give back to the community and help their own business thrive, to the Boy Scout needing a project to work on to gain Eagle Scout status, and even to the landscaper who could make connections and offer services to make the dog park a reality.
My plan is to try and hold meetings about once a month somewhere casually – like the library, at a local restaurant, or even at Great Oak Park itself – to just chat about overall progress, see what everyone can do to help until we meet again, and have all of us come up with ideas and execute some of those ideas to advance the cause. I’m hoping to choose between 5-7 individuals from a variety of people who live and/or work in Oakland and potentially also others from nearby surrounding towns who can work with me to achieve our shared goal of building an Oakland dog park.
If you would be interested in joining such a committee, please send an email to dogrun4oakland@yahoo.com and include your name, address, contact information, current employment, reasons you want to join the committee, and what you feel you could bring to the table to help make a dog park a reality. Please send all information to me before August 19 so I have time to review the applications and make selections by the end of the month. While details will be announced in the coming days, I will be embarking on a “fundraising and information tour” around Oakland the week of August 14th and I hope besides raising additional funds and educating the public about my efforts, if you are interested in joining such a committee that you can come out and ask me any questions you may have.
Thank you and I hope to hear from many of you in the coming weeks!