As the FAO Schwarz Fellow with Trust for Public Land (TPL) in Philadelphia, my role is focused on stewardship and engagement at our Community Schoolyards, which are projects that transform asphalt surfaces into vibrant green spaces for students to grow, play, and learn in. To date, we have fifteen schoolyards completed across the city. With that, stewardship becomes essential to ensuring these schoolyards remain vibrant and well-engaged spaces. But with such an array of schoolyards across the city, it becomes essential to make space to dream-board how we connect with our school communities, identify their stewardship needs, and translate that understanding into action.

If meetings are where dream-boarding is planted, getting out into the field is where it grows. In the earlier stages of my Fellowship in August and September 2025, I toured all our Community Schoolyards to gain familiarity with the neighborhoods they are in. I also represented TPL at several back-to-school events during this time, where I was able to connect more directly with community members at their schoolyards. At our table, we invited people to respond to a prompt written on a bag: “What activities do you want to see in your schoolyard?” Students and families walked up, grabbed a sticky note, and dream-boarded themselves as they dropped their responses into the bag. Answers ranged from activities focused on trees, art, soccer, and many more ideas. These sticky notes were not just responses; they revealed how each community wanted to engage with their schoolyards and further shaped my dream-boarding process at the same time. 

Later in the fall, our team led a Community Day of Service with WSFS Bank, one of TPL Philadelphia’s corporate donors. During this volunteer-led event, WSFS employees came together at Taggart Elementary’s schoolyard to spread three yards of mulch, plant more than forty perennial plants in the raingarden, and collect trash from the schoolyard’s perimeter. While we were physically stewarding the space to keep it vibrant and healthy for students and neighbors, it was also meaningful to see volunteers joke, talk, and get to know one another as they worked toward a shared goal.

This event highlighted how stewardship and engagement at our Community Schoolyards is meant to underscore the community aspect just as much as the stewardship itself. With every perennial they planted, volunteers were planting connections too. Once again, I found myself dream-boarding about what future volunteer-led events could look like and how I could prioritize building community through them. 

Keeping with this “dream” theme, this January I traveled to James Logan Elementary School, the site of one of our upcoming schoolyards, to attend a Community Partner Meeting. Not only was this meeting energizing because I connected with other partners involved with the school, but also because of a portion of the agenda called the “Community Builder.” In this group discussion, we were asked to consider what a “dream” is, what it means, what you do with a dream, and even what our organization’s dream might be.

It was inspiring to hear how other partners defined a dream and to see how our different interpretations found common ground. My group’s reflections could be summarized this way: a dream is a positive visualization you act upon. It can be a launching pad or a goal you work backward from to achieve. This experience created space for me to step back, revisit my “why” in this Fellowship, and reflect on my own projects through that lens.

As an organization overall, I have found that this concept of dream boarding is embedded in TPL’s work. It shows up in how we explore what it means to connect people to the outdoors and the different paths we can take to get there. The people I have spoken with, both across the organization and within the Philadelphia team, exemplify what it means to dream big and move boldly toward those goals.

While I have learned so much in my Fellowship and look forward to what lies ahead, one theme has become clear: making space to dream up projects and initiatives, especially collaboratively, is essential. 

And then, what do you do with a dream board? 

You bring it to life.