Volunteers Serve Hand-in-Hand with Southside Neighborhoods
What happens when you give over 250 volunteers and residents some tools, materials and some basic instructions on how to make a neighborhood a little bit cleaner and safer? You get community in action! Saturdays Community Action Project was even bigger and better with area churches and block clubs joining together with volunteers from faith based organizations far and wide. The enthusiastic group took on challenging alley strategies intended to improve community safety, such as affixing address identification numbers to garages and rear buildings, removing graffiti, reducing overgrown brush, and cleaning up strewn trash in the streets and around boarded and vacant properties. In addition, a butterfly garden was installed and planted as well as a major clean-up of the Kozy Park Lagoon. The efforts were intended to raise the standards in sometimes neglected alleys while sending a signal to all residents that everyone can work together and help contribute to keeping our streets and alleys clean and safe.
By working together, residents and volunteers learned a few things about each other as well. A circle process was used to open the days activities by giving everyone a chance to introduce themselves and give the team their inspiration for serving the community. Even though the brush may sprout anew and the trash will blow in from the surrounding streets, the interactions had and the strategies employed will continue to inspire others into the future.
