Volunteers
Local resident Christopher Bonanos helps refurbish St. Vartan Park basketball structures as part of a St. Vartan Park Conservancy ‘It’s My Park’ volunteer session on September 16, 2023
On September 10, 2022, St. Vartan Park Conservancy volunteers paint the iron fence of the First Avenue public garden during an event for It's My Park, a Partnership for Parks service program
Join the fun and growing St. Vartan Park Conservancy community as a project volunteer. Please introduce yourself to us at team@stvartanpark.org.
Partnerships
St. Vartan Park Conservancy partners with other community organizations and small and large businesses on volunteer projects that raise the quality of life in and around St. Vartan Park. The partnerships’ projects have included many upgrades to the park.
Organizations interested in forming a partnership can contact the Conservancy at team@stvartanpark.org. Below are samples of Conservancy partnership projects, fulfilled with Apple, Cub Scout Pack 422, Ismaili CIVIC, NYU Langone Health, Moody’s, PitchBook and WTW.
NYU Langone Health and St. Vartan Park Conservancy joined forces for a volunteer work session in St. Vartan Park on June 21, 2025, with upgrades that included painted benches, composting, litter and graffiti removal, even a new basketball net
On April 29, 2025, PitchBook and St. Vartan Park Conservancy collaborated on St. Vartan Park improvements that included gardening and the painting of all nine benches on the park’s south side
In a special St. Vartan Park Conservancy-hosted volunteer session on October 26, 2024,, members of local Cub Scout Pack 422 earned Community Service patches for fun transfer of leaves from lawn to compost pile and learned about benefits of composting.
Apple and St. Vartan Park Conservancy kicked off their partnership’s second year on July 18, 2024. Apple employees, some here in the St. Varatn Park garden with Conservancy president Kevin O’Keefe (in white pants), conducted a tree survey for the full park and its surroundings and did beautification work around the park.
On November 4, 2023, St. Vartan Park Conservancy hosted local Cub Scout Pack 422 today for activities that earned each participating member a Community Service patch (displayed by the two Scouts in center). The day included an educational talk about the St. Vartan Park public garden, a fun pumpkin-carving session, composting, litter pickup between the garden and the East River, and — in cooperation with our community partner Alliance for Kips Bay — planting of flower bulbs near NYC Ferry’s East 34th Street/Midtown East Landing.
On June 12, 2023, more than two dozen Ismaili CIVIC volunteers from the Shia Ismaili Muslim community (some here with St. Vartan Park Conservancy’s Kevin O’Keefe) worked on projects in St. Vartan Park that included garden upkeep, entrance-gates painting and basketball upgrades
Apple employees in New York joined St. Vartan Park Conservancy to restore St. Vartan Park gates and fencing on First Avenue and East 35th Street
or a St. Vartan Park Conservancy volunteer project on November 22, 2022, employees from international insurance and advisory company WTW scraped and repainted the park building's exterior railings, doors, plant-bed fences and other ironworks
Fifty volunteers from Moody’s work on a St. Vartan Park Conservancy fence-restoration project and other beautification activities in St. Vartan Park in cooperation with Partnerships for Parks on June 15 2022
In addition, the Conservancy works with company partners of the It’s My Park program featured below.
It’s My Park
Some St. Vartan Park Conservancy volunteer days are part of the Conservancy’s partnership with It’s My Park, a volunteer program of City Parks Foundation’s Partnerships for Parks. Some of the Conservancy’s It’s My Park projects appear below.
A St. Vartan Park Conservancy-hosted It’s My Park Day in the St. Vartan Park garden on November 17 , 2024, included the planting of \300 tulip and grape hyacinth bulbs and the collection of many eco-friendly bags of leaves for composting.
On October 21, 2023, in and near St. Vartan Park, St. Vartan Park Conservancy teamed with the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association Green and Clean Committee for an It’s My Park session of daffodil, tulip and crocus bulb plantings and neighborhood cleanup
Left: Across the street from St. Vartan Park between First Avenue and Tunnel Approach Street, a storage area for a city construction project was a blight on the park neighborhood. The sidewalk between the storage space and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel became a trash heap, with some of the litter regularly blowing into the park. On March 18, 2023, after completion of beautification work in the park for an It’s My Park day, St. Vartan Park Conservancy hosted volunteers from schools in Manhattan and Queens throughly, who leaned the East 36th Street corridor's mess into 18 garbage bags..
Right: A St. Vartan Park Conservancy volunteer attends to the St.. Vartan Park northwest plant bed during an It’s My Park beautification project on April 1, 2023.
At a five-hour October 9, 2022, It’s My Park session administered by St. Vartan Park Conservancy’s Kevin O’Keefe (center, hatted), volunteers including Key Club members from Townsend Harris High School and Francis Lewis High School and members of the Hunter College chapter of the Zeta Phi Alpha sorority scraped and repainted iron fencing on the north side of the park garden
On September 17, 2022, many community members helped St. Vartan Park Conservancy on an It’s My Park session of scraping and repainting the iron fencing on the south side of the public garden
As part of It’s My Park on July 16, 2022, St. Vartan Park Conservancy hosted a volunteer gathering to paint the iron fence on thei east side of the public garden