trevman23
Registered: September 2008 City/Town/Province: mesa Posts: 1
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In August, I decided that I wanted to organize a project to clean up a portion of my community. I began this effort by contacting the City of Mesa Volunteer Coordinator Katie Brown for a list of potential clean-up sites. I researched the sites from this list and chose the Eureka Canal as the area that represented the greatest need. The Eureka Canal is in an inner-city, gang-infested area, which was filled with graffiti, trash, weeds, and overhanging vegetation.
The project included cleaning trash, painting over graffiti, removing the overhanging limbs of trees, raking, and disposing all of the remains. I had everyone gather together at 6:30am on the morning of September 15th for directions to the canal. After feeding them a light breakfast, I put everyone into groups and assigned each group a vehicle for transportation to the site. Katie Brown, from the City, met us at the canal and expressed her concern that the project was too large for our team to complete in one day. We took this as a challenge and I assigned each group a work detail. One group was assigned to cut down the overhanging limbs along the pathway, while another group picked up the limbs and put them into the giant dumpsters. Another group started painting over the graffiti located along the wall. I also had a group picking up trash found along the canal and cleaning out dead vegetation. For the next couple hours all twenty-seven team members worked together under my lead at a quick and productive pace. While each group was busy with their tasks, I went around assisting each group to help things run more smoothly. After about two and a half hours things were looking very promising and all of the groups were finished with the jobs I had assigned them. For about a half an hour more we worked hard as a team and made finishing touches. The resulting three hours of tough labor left the canal spotless and the project was finally complete.
The trash and vegetation debris overfilled a 2500 kg dumpster which the city had provided and the graffiti was eradicated from over the one mile area of block walls. Katie Brown was overwhelmed when she saw the results of our hard labor, especially considering the size of the project. This project not only improved the well-being of the environment but also this community, as rivaling high school students worked together to make our world a better place.
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