America has celebrated July as the nation’s official Park and Recreation Month for more than 25 years and in 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives officially mandated July as “Park and Recreation Month.” 

Park and Recreation Month is a great time to highlight all the valuable benefits you bring to your community, from helping to inspire healthy lifestyles to promoting conservation and environmental sustainability. July is your time to shine and we are excited to help you make the month a success.

This July, NRPA is encouraging you and your community to GET WILD about parks and recreation and help raise the public’s awareness of the benefits and offerings of parks and recreation.

GET WILD is designed to be versatile, allowing you to promote a variety of activities one can enjoy through parks and recreation. You can get creative with it; think wild workouts or wellness events, getting wet and wild at the community pool, or even all the ways you can get your community wild about nature and the environment around them. 

Through this year’s exciting campaign, NRPA is encouraging Americans to show how much fun parks and recreation are, while learning about the benefits they bring. NRPA has planned several national initiatives to help accomplish that, including “Get Wild” geocaching, social media initiatives on Facebook, Foursquare, and Pinterest, and, of course, the ever popular GET WILD social media poster found in this issue. Get together with your community and take pictures or videos with this poster showing how “wild” you are about parks and recreation. Post them to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, websites, and blogs tagging NRPA whenever possible. 

In support of this year’s effort, NRPA will be blogging, tweeting, posting on Facebook, and getting the word out to the media through national press releases, so expect a big buzz this year for National Park and Recreation Month.  

You can also get in on spreading the word and promoting Park and Recreation Month in your community. A complete toolkit of materials and ideas is available online. Included are press releases and media alerts, a downloadable version of the poster, web banners that you can post online, social media graphics, the official Park and Recreation Month proclamation, a customizable Park and Recreation Month calendar, logo files, a geocache “How to Guide” and much more. 

We know you’re wild about parks and recreation so this July during Park and Recreation Month, come GET WILD with us. Stay informed on the fun. Learn more about July's Park and Recreation Month line up and make sure you “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.