Friends of the Parks (FOTP) is a non-profit organization in Chicago, Illinois. Formed in 1975, it acts as a watchdog group and environmental advocate for the Chicago area. Specifically, it monitors the condition and safety of the Chicago Park District and the forest preserves of Cook County.
FOTP's office is in downtown Chicago. Its president is Erma Tranter. Its staff of approximately eight people relies on volunteer efforts for many of its activities.
Annual events organized by FOTP include the LATE Ride, an overnight bicycling event in July where thousands of riders travel through city streets; Earth Day Parks and Preserves Clean-up, mobilizing several thousand volunteers on a single day in April to beautify and clean over 100 Chicago area locations; and a black tie ball which features a charity auction.
FOTP assists in educating the public regarding environmental matters. It provides environmental education programs for Chicago students through two programs: Nature Along the Lake (NAL) for elementary students, and the Earth Team, an after-school apprenticeship program for high school students.
FOTP encourages grassroots efforts to organize local park organizations and acts as a liaison for organizing volunteer events to maintain and improve Chicago area parks, forest preserves, and other greenspace.
Famous quotes containing the words friends of, friends and/or parks:
“We can teach prevention. For little kids, the best protection is that they should not be alone in public places. All children should be conscious of strangers, and be discriminating and wary of them. This won’t make them grow up suspicious as long as they have adults around whom they know and can trust: relatives, friends of their parents, parents of friends.”
—“How Parents Can Talk to Their Kids,” Newsweek (January 10, 1994)
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)