Wow! Who ripped a couple of months out of my calendar?
Here I was, smugly thinking I had everything under control, and wham! Today starts the second week of November, and Thanksgiving is right around the corner.
One of the things I had wanted to share with you was some of the back story and successes concerning Grand Canyon National Park’s first (and they hope annual) Dia de la Familia, or Day of the Family, celebration, held Sept. 26, 2009. It coincided with this year’s National Public Lands Day, and also tapped into National Hispanic Heritage Month.
Well, thinking about Thanksgiving over the weekend made me think of my family, and voila! I remembered the Dia de la Familia pre-event story that we did for you back in September. If you’d like to see the story, click on the following link: http://www.oldwestnewwest.com/national-state-parks/grand-canyon/grand-canyon-national-park-to-celebrate-first-annual-dia-de-la-familia.html
Last month I had a chance to catch up with Dave Smith, district interpreter on the South Rim at Grand Canyon, and we chatted about the park’s first Dia de la Familia, how it came about and how successful it was.
“For many years, we’ve been trying to come to terms with the fact that our user base doesn’t demographically match with the whole, and we’re always looking for ways to broaden our message to all our audiences,” he told me. “Our big challenge is: how can we make the park mean something to all of our country’s diverse communities?”
Specifically, he was talking about the nation’s growing Hispanic population, especially since the Hispanic community makes up a big slice of the demographic pie in the Southwest.
Coming up with a tie-in to National Hispanic Heritage Month (actually, the observance stretches between September and October), and leveraging off National Public Lands Day was a natural. Why not leverage the two events to try and reach a new group of potential park visitors – Hispanic families?
According to the press release put out by the Grand Canyon staff, “The National Park Service team that developed and promoted the Dia de la Familia idea was made up of recent graduates of the park’s first GOAL (Generating Organizational Advancement and Leadership) Leadership Academy. The academy brought together a promising group of diverse Grand Canyon employees to work together to develop leadership skills. As a part of the program, participants were expected to develop new relationships with existing and potential park partners while implementing a program that achieved park and NPS goals.”
Dia de la Familia team members partnered with the US Forest Service, who provided staff, an appearance by Smokey the Bear, and information on recreational and job opportunities to assist with the event. Team members also coordinated with the new director of the Western Discovery Museum (planned for development in Tusayan), who was planning a privately sponsored, community fiesta the night before the event.
According to Smith, the results of the first Family Day event was good, with Rangers making more than 2,600 visitor contacts that would not otherwise have been made.
Dia de la Familia was a bilingual celebration, he said, that commemorated the Hispanic heritage of the American Southwest and of Grand Canyon National Park.
The group brought in six artists from Oaxaca, Mexico, to demonstrate such skills as weaving, sculpting, candle making and other art forms. Each artist had an English translator on hand to answer questions from those not speaking Spanish. On the right, Sofia Ruiz Lorenzo of Oaxaca, Mexico, demonstrates traditional candle making and decorating skills. NPS photo.
An added bonus: The entrance fee was waved on that day because of Public Lands Day.
“We also did a lot of kids programs, a star walk, we had daytime astronomy programs, and reading circles,” Smith added. There was even a job fair, an effort to make the National Park Service work force more diverse.
He rated the day a good first effort at reaching out to Hispanic families, from Phoenix to Flagstaff.
And for 2010?
We definitely will do a Dia de la Familia next year,” he said. “We’ll do even more outreach with the Hispanic community.”
Good work, and congrats to Dave and everyone else at Grand Canyon who worked so hard to make Dia de la Familia a success.
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