Learn about Friends of Pogue's Run
FOPR is a volunteer collective that has worked since 2012, first under Reconnecting to Our Waterways (ROW) as the Pogue's Run Waterway Committee and now as Friends of Pogue's Run under Keep Indianapolis Beautiful (KIB), helping enhance the quality of life and improve the natural environment along the Pogue's Run and its surrounding neighborhoods, parks and businesses.
Dan Lake, AICP: Dan is a resident of the Holy Cross neighborhood and has been involved with the Pogue's Run waterway committee/FOPR since 2019.
Amanda Wade: Amanda is a resident of the Holy Cross neighborhood and has been involved with the Pogue's Run waterway committee/FOPR since 2017. She has also been active with Pathways Over Pogue's.
Our volunteers create new ways for the public to engage with our waterway through organizing fun events (bike rides and tours, free fishing days), implementing physical improvements (trash clean ups, invasive plant removals native species plantings), hosting educational programs, and much more.
To cultivate and support resident-led, action-oriented change by providing a platform from which like-minded citizens with waterway interests gather and support improving the Pogue's Run and its neighborhoods along the waterway on the Near Eastside.
Our community and partner engagement builds capacity to support our mission and for our neighborhoods to build the local, democratic processes needed to address the challenges and opportunities with which they are presented.
FOPR is an inclusive, action-oriented, collective effort with clear vision, goals, and a holistic approach leading to measurable outcomes.
Join our committee and help bring awareness to the waterway and its importance to the community. Visit our website and Events Calendar for upcoming meetings and events or contact us to learn more and get connected!
FOPR started as the Pogue's Run Waterway Committee under Reconnecting to Our Waterways. In October 2010, the City of Indianapolis and the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) hosted a CEO's for Cities' Livability Challenge, where national experts and local Indianapolis leaders convened with the goal to generate ten big ideas for how cities can provide ever-present access to art, good design, and nature. One of the big ideas for every city to consider was to "reconnect to your waterways."
Indianapolis leaders promoted the Livability Challenge ideas to Indianapolis stakeholders throughout 2011. In late December 2011, Eli Lilly Company was looking for a focus and long-term impact for their Lilly Day of Service so they brought community leaders together and the idea of Reconnecting to Our Waterways (ROW) was born. Early stakeholders included local arts and cultural organizations, local government, social and environmental agencies, corporate leaders, universities, museums and others.
Prior to the Livability Challenge, six Indianapolis urban neighborhoods created Quality of Life Plans via the Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiative (GINI), launched in 2006 and expanded over the coming years and later renamed Great Places 2020. Those initiatives were established and continue to support neighbors working across traditional boundaries to collaborate on issues affecting their neighborhoods. These Quality of Life Plans became the original geographic focus areas for ROW, along six Indianapolis waterways.
Consistent with the tenets of collective impact, ROW focused on creating a strong foundation of metrics and backbone guidelines to frame the collective initiative. By its second year, the Steering Committee laid the groundwork for grassroots initiatives through waterway committees. Neighbors and community leaders embraced ROW as an organization that could help them accomplish their Quality of Life goals. ROW also provided avenues for professionals who could support those goals and work on collective goals of their own, through the Element Committees.
Reconnecting to Our Waterways (ROW) was a collective impact initiative that worked purposefully between 2012 and 2024 to change the quality of life and ecology along Indianapolis waterways and surrounding neighborhoods. ROW convened community partners to enhance quality of life through innovation, analysis, cultural advancement and investment along Indy waterways and neighborhoods and to discover and celebrate Indy's waterways as a community asset.
