National Park Friends Alliance

Sometimes I’m asked, “What does Friends of Canaveral do?” And, “What is the purpose of a Friends group in the first place?”

In a word, it’s about stewardship -- and stewardship has many faces. It can come in the form of volunteerism, including meeting and guiding the public at National Park Service sites, participating in public outreach at municipal events on behalf of parks, engaging in citizen participation in the preservation of trails and waterbodies, or simply to help fill in funding gaps for park resources.

Friends of Canaveral has learned a lot from the National Park Friends Alliance, a network of nonprofit partners representing more than 200 national park sites nationwide. They have shared their stories and experiences. They have taught us that Friends of Canaveral is not alone – that we are one of many Friends groups across our expansive nation trying to uphold, protect and promote the national parks in our own communities.

And when I think of my own experiences with national parks as a child growing up in the Carolinas, I recall numerous family vacations to national monuments in Washington, D.C., Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Gettysburg National Military Park, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Parkway and to the Kitty Hawk/ Wright Brothers National Memorial.

These family trips were educational, historical, experiential and brimming with natural beauty, like the sweeping mountains and valleys of the Smoky Mountains and the sparkling vastness of the Chesapeake Bay. Some stops were bucket-list destinations, like seeing the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, where manned flight successfully took wing. Some sites were poignant, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and some places simply created lasting memories for our family while visiting public lands shared simultaneously by so many other families just like ours.

National parks help us make emotional connections and give us stories and photos to bring home. And that generational connection matures with time, making us feel a responsibility to protect these special places so that the generations ahead can experience the same a-ha moments or the same sweeping waves of intrigue and awe.

It’s good to know that Friends groups like ours are scattered throughout this nation attempting to elicit community support for our national parks, monuments and seashores. Most of all, it’s good to see solidarity of purposeful action by Friends groups doing everything possible to inform and engage the communities surrounding the gates of our nation’s most precious places.



Lisa D. Mickey

President, Friends of Canaveral

Lisa D. Mickey is a Florida Master Naturalist / Florida Land Steward