Ward 8 Woods park stewards clearing tires from the woods. Image courtesy of Ward 8 Woods 

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Ward 8 Woods, a local DC non-profit charged with cleaning the forests in Ward 8, had to find a new way to do their work.

For several years the group’s members have been plunging headfirst into the 500+ acres of woodlands that grace Ward 8, cutting down and uprooting invasive species, collecting unwanted trash, and doing all they can to restore and rehabilitate the forests of their community.

But in mid-March of this year, to stave off the spread of the virus, the National Park Service closed off their lands to the public. Then, according to Nathan Harrington, the founder of Ward 8 Woods, the DC Department of Public Works said it would temporarily suspend trash removal for the group. Harrington and his staff decided to go on a two-week hiatus to deliberate their next move.

During this time, they concluded that while removing trash and invasive species from the woods was important for them, it was not the most essential activity. Their community was in “crisis,” he said, and they felt they needed to find new ways to continue to serve.

COVID-19 has been known to be disproportionately affecting residents in underserved areas in the city. Ward 8 has lost more of its residents to coronavirus than any other ward in the District.

The group teamed up with the DC Mutual Aid Network, a decentralized alliance of community members that works to respond to local needs by delivering groceries, hygiene products, masks, gloves and other items to neighbors in need.

“The pandemic is a hard time. People ain’t got this, and people ain’t got that,” Robert Carpenter, Ward 8 Woods’ lead park steward explained. This kind of work, he said, helps with “taking stress off of them.”

“Some people can’t get to the store,” he said, or “don’t have the money for the products.”

Carpenter also added that “by knowing that they can call and somebody’s going to bring it [groceries] to them” was enough to put a smile on their faces.

Mandy Katz, a Ward 8 Woods board member and resident of Bethesda, Maryland, said she found out about the organization from an article she read in GGWash last year, and had joined the group in December to help with fundraising and helping to publicize their work outside the city.

When the pandemic hit, she started making masks and selling them in her community in exchange for donations to Ward 8 Woods. Over time she was able to raise around $4,000, she said. Then, speaking with Harrington and other members of the group, she learned that there was a surging local demand for masks within Ward 8.

She stopped selling them, and started to work with other members of the Ward 8 community to sew and distribute the masks for free. Katz said that once Harrington “put the announcement out” that the group was looking for volunteers to help sew with a machine she had donated, a flood of volunteers who lived in Ward 8 and who already had machines jumped on board.

Masks that will be given out to the community. Image by Ward 8 Woods used with permission.

The group currently has a GoFundMe with a target of $1,500 which they are close to reaching. They also aim to make and distribute 1,000 masks within Ward 8. To date, Katz estimates they have distributed over 300.

Katz also added that she felt “the pandemic has highlighted the importance of Ward 8 Woods’ activities and its goals, because I look around in my neighborhood and I see how much access we have to the outdoors, even in a pandemic, and that’s what is needed in Ward 8.”

Mona Rayside, another Ward 8 Woods board member who has been with the group since its inception, has been living in Ward 8 since 2002. She said one of the group’s core goals has always been to better help people connect with nature.

Given the pandemic, however, Rayside became increasingly concerned and occupied with food insecurity. She said that if “50% of the people here decided to grow stuff in their gardens, we could probably make a huge dent in reducing food insecurity in our own neighborhoods.”

That’s when she came up with the idea of building a community garden on a vacant lot located across from the Frederick Douglass house in Anacostia. The space was christened the “Lory Shaw Memorial Garden,” after the property owner’s father, who Rayside said had “struggled for a long time to try and claim it.”

A community garden started by Rayside. Image by GKJ.

She added that within the area, “a lot of Black folks lost their lands or lost their homes for a variety of reasons,” and that the owners of the land were at first concerned about how the land was going to be used.

Last week, as restrictions were eased across the District, the group has started to make their way back to the forests. They are now doing clean-ups on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and reserving Tuesdays and Thursdays for community service with the DC Mutual Aid Network.

  • Island Press Urban Resilience Project
  • Meyer Foundation

This article is part of the GGWash Urbanist Journalism Fellowship, made possible in part by the Island Press Urban Resilience Project and the Meyer Foundation.

Will is a former Urbanist Journalism Fellow with Greater Greater Washington who now serves as an accountability reporter for both Street Sense Media and The DC Line. He recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing at American University. Prior to this, Will served eleven years in the Marine Corps where he did multiple deployments to Afghanistan, and the Asia-Pacific. He is also a polyglot who speaks six languages to varying degrees of fluency (Chinese, Dari, English, French, Korean, and Spanish).