July 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 66

N R PA U P DAT E

* Luke Bolinger, Town of Erie
Parks and Recreation
* Sarah Hansen, City of Golden
Valley Parks and Recreation
* Elissa Malone, City of Frisco
Parks and Recreation
Student Scholarships
* Kandice Newton, University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse
* Kristen Sikorsky, Kansas State
University
Diversity Scholarships
* Attiyya Atkins, Broward County
Parks and Recreation
* LaCleveia Morley, City of Miami Department of Parks and
Recreation
" The NRPA National Awards
and Scholarship Committee is
pleased to honor the 2019 NRPA
Awards, Scholarships and Fellowships recipients, " says Dan Olson,
chair of NRPA's national awards
and scholarship committee and
director of operations for Champaign Park District in Champaign,
Illinois. " The committee was honored to review all the applications
of qualified individuals and agencies that have made significant
contributions to their communities through the field of parks and
recreation. "
Award recipients will be recognized and celebrated during
conference at the Best of the Best
Ceremony, Wednesday, September 25 from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Applications for the 2020 National Awards will open in January.
To learn more about the NRPA
Awards, visit www.nrpa.org/
awards.

Parks & Recreation

| J U LY 2 0 1 9 | W W W. PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

Applying to CAPRA -
A Journey to Accreditation
Sharon J. Bousquet, CPRE

he City of New London (Connecticut) Recreation Department's
journey to achieving accreditation by NRPA's Commission for Accreditation of Park and Recreation Agencies (CAPRA) began with
one employee attending NRPA's Directors School. That employee was me,
and in August 2010, after completing my first year of the school, I returned
to the office and pitched the idea of our agency becoming nationally accredited to our director of recreation, who immediately said " Yes. It was
the beginning of a huge learning process for us, a small community from a
state with no other accredited park and recreation agencies.

The first, very important step
was to have everyone involved buyin to the process. In the winter of
2010, we hosted a CAPRA training
at our office for all staff members
and Parks and Recreation Commission members to attend. With
everyone invested in the path forward, we applied to CAPRA shortly thereafter.
While the application forms
might seem minor, for us, it
involved getting the city manager
and parks and Uecreation commisVion
to sign their approval of us
committing to the process, which
would require resources, time and
money from a city that had little
of those to offer. New London is a
small, highly diverse, low-income
city where all school children receive free breakfast and lunch. De-

spite the challenges, we gained the
approval needed to continue our
quest for accreditation.
Once applied, we began having
department-wide
accreditation
team meetings led by those of us
responsible for each section. We
identified an accreditation leader
who was responsible for the overall process and schedule, and outlined a two-year time frame with
an expected completion range in
spring 2013. As a department of
five full-time staff (three in the
recreation division, one in youth
affairs and one in the senior center), we assigned people to sections according to their strengths.
We started at February 2013 and
backtracked to create a timeline
of deliverables. I would later
learn how crucial this was to the
process and to our success.
In the fall of 2012, we set up a
mock visit with one of the few accredited agencies in New England.
I had written up the self-assessment as I believed it was supposed
to be written at the time. While
the visitor made a few suggestions
as to organization, he gave us a
thumbs up and told us that overall,

July 2019 - Parks & Recreation

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