Date: April 23, 2007
Contact: Janet Miller, Park Board President, 264-2988 or 516-3680 (cell)
Or Dale Goter:
: DGoter@wichita.gov
: (316) 268-4351

April 23, 2007 (Wichita, KS) - On Tuesday, April 24, the Wichita Board of Park Commissioners and GreenWay Alliance will host the second presentation in the five-part Dream in Green speaker series. The presentation will be at 7 PM in the Lowe Auditorium of the WSU Metroplex, 5015 E. 29th St. North.
 The presenter will be Dr. Karen Mumford, faculty member and researcher in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the Rollin School of Public Health at Emory University. Mumford’s presentation will address how parks, recreation, and open space are essential to our individual and collective health and well-being - from providing places for increased physical activity to filtering pollutants from the air and water, to strengthening social connections within neighborhoods.
 The five-part Dream in Green series began in April and continues through June. Free and open to the public, the series will feature five nationally recognized speakers who will communicate how parks, recreation, and open space strengthen communities by providing economic, social, recreational, educational and environmental benefits.
The series is designed to invite and encourage Wichitans to participate throughout the next 12 months in updating the City of Wichita’s Parks, Recreation, and Open Space (PROS) Master Plan. This plan will shape Wichita’s direction and plans for parks, recreation and open space for the next 10 to 15 years. Public input for the plan will be gathered through community surveys, focus groups, planning workshops, and a number of public meetings.
Funding for the Dream in Green series has been provided by Kansas Health Foundation, GreenWay Alliance, K.T. Wiedemann Foundation, and the University of Kansas School of Medicine - Wichita. Additional support has been provided by Wichita State University and the City of Wichita.
Past Dream in Green presentations will eventually be available for public viewing on Channel 7, Wichita’s public access channel, and also on the PROS Plan web site. For future presentation dates and topics, as well as video of past presentations, please visit http://www.WichitaPROSplan.org.