David-Earl Russell and Elijah Henderson spent this summer interning with the Minneapolis Parks Foundation as part of their education at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement at St. John’s University. As a follow up from their first blog posts, Meet David-Earl Russell here, we invited them to share some reflections and highlights from their work, this time through a recorded video interview. This is the first of two recordings, as David-Earl and Elijah interviewed each other in separate segments.

Thank you so much to both David-Earl and Elijah for their work this summer, particularly their focus on RiverFirst and Reimagining the Civic Commons (RCC). As the Minneapolis Parks Foundation begins this new endeavor with RCC, we expect the research and strategies developed this summer will impact the Parks Foundation’s work within this sphere for years to come.