Future of Mosholu Parkland (FOMP), BetaNYC, Councilman Eric Dinowitz (C.D. 11) and residents, including Venice Turraine, Liza Rodriguez and others, gathered on Friday, July 10, for Part I of a “Mapping for Equity” event which took place along Mosholu Parkway in Bedford Park. The purpose of the event was to map the parkway, pinpoint available public resources, and use the data for future planning to create more equitable and accessible spaces for the neighborhood.

 

According to its social media page, and as reported, FOMP (formerly Friends of Mosholu Parkland) is a local environmental conservation nonprofit, comprised primarily of volunteers, “providing leadership that engages the Mosholu community to improve the green spaces on Mosholu Parkway for generations.”

 

The group frequently organizes clean-up, educational, beautification and festive events in the Bedford Park and Norwood neighborhoods, as well as sometimes further afield. They also run the Keeper’s House Community Garden at 3400 Reservoir Oval East in Norwood, where they train students on the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) about conservation, sustainability and more.   

The event began at Mosholu Playground, next to P.S. 8 on Mosholu Parkway and Bainbridge Avenue, and continued as far as Kossuth Playground, also on Mosholu Parkway, located between Kossuth Avenue and Steuben Avenue. As reported, a nonfatal shooting took place near the school in 2022, prompting a request from some parents for more cameras in the area.

Quaranta said the participants were given different maps by BetaNYC, split up into groups, some of which included the summer youth students, and followed instructions about mapping how many benches, how many street lights, and play equipment, for example, there was in the area. “Just to get things on the map and make the people see and be aware of their surroundings because a lot of them were like, ‘Oh! I didn’t even see the light post there! I didn’t know we had this many benches!’,” Quaranta added.

 

Meanwhile, Naeema Haque, development strategy manager at Beta NYC, said the event drew around 14 people in total on the day. “So, we came out at Mosholu Playground to do our mapping for equity event,” she said. “We’re part of Beta NYC, a nonprofit that focuses on improving the digital literacy in New York, and kind of advocating for more equity in the City, whether it’s through mapping playgrounds or helping people understand what the City has in terms of open data, and how to advocate for your communities and your space in New York City.”

 

She continued, “We’re actually mapping all of Mosholu Parkway today, and so we came to the playground to start. When it comes to mapping the playground, we see that we have the knowledge of where the playground is. Sometimes, we have the knowledge of where the entrances are, but not everything is mapped on like, let’s say, Google Maps or Apple Maps.”

She continued, “Like, where are the benches? Where are the bathrooms? Where are the water fountains?” Essentially, Haque said it was a data-gathering exercise grounded in something New Yorkers were familiar with in the community. “We know people love parks,” she said. “People see [them] as their space, their public space that they can come to and utilize. So, for example, there’s a bench next to us right now that wasn’t exclusively mapped on a map.”

 

She continued, “And so now, today, we’re showing folks how to put this on a map, on a physical paper that we printed out, maps of each area, how to map it on the map, and then on the 23rd, we’re going to have another event where we show folks how they can take that little point that they made on the physical map, and put it in the larger open data that we have of all these maps on a platform called OpenStreetMap, which is kind of like the Wikipedia of maps.”

 

Haque said BetaNYC was “really thankful” to FOMP and to the councilman’s office for partnering with them on the event. “They came out to talk about how important this work is, how to get in touch with our office. It’s a really great way for the community to meet the people that represent them, and also learn how to advocate for things, and who to go to when they want to make improvements.”

Later, Norwood News also spoke to SYEP students Bamba, Bahaba, and Halima, all of whom seemed a little tired, about their involvement in the exercise. “We just did some checking about the benches and what we need more to improve,” Bamba said. “That’s all we did.”

 

Asked what was needed following the exercise, he said in part, “I think we need a lot, like, work about the benches, like paintings. Most of the benches got broken, broken wood. They need to be repaired, and also, we need to upgrade the playground. It’s too old. It’s rusty. It’s old. It was messy. We need to work more about it.”

Norwood News asked if the students were enjoying the SYEP work over the summer months. “We are enjoying it, yeah,” Bamba said.  Asked if they were studying locally or elsewhere in the City, they said, “No, we’re here.”

 

We also asked if the students were following the 2026 FIFA World Cup and if so, who they were supporting. “I was supporting my country, Senegal, but I’m supporting France now,” Bamba said. Meanwhile, Bahaba said, “I was supporting Portugal but they lost also [to Spain]. Now, I’m supporting France.” [France were later beaten by Argentina in one of the semi-finals.]

We asked Quaranta how the event came about and she said in part, “So, they [BetaNYC] received funding from the councilperson so honestly, it was the councilperson who gave that funding to do that mapping, and we appreciate that because that means that he is focusing on Mosholu Parkway. That means he went out of his way to give the funding to map out Mosholu – it means it’s on his mind.”

 

For his part, Dinowitz said of the event, “Early in my tenure as your council member, I partnered with BetaNYC to debut a map highlighting playground accessibility across New York City [as reported by Norwood News at the time]. The map made it easy for families to locate playgrounds near their homes and schools that accommodate children and adults with disabilities, and it included detailed information on the accessible features available at each location.” The councilman is a former teacher who also taught students with disabilities.

He added, “We continue to work with BetaNYC on important projects in our community. We recently worked with BetaNYC in Norwood and Bedford Park on the mapping for equity project, a civics and data literacy program that teaches the public how to see data while collecting data on New York City’s under-mapped and under-represented public spaces.”

 

Part II of the exercise takes place (indoors) on Thursday, July 23. See attached flier above for more information.