What is Surveying?
This week, the Green Team went into the City of Reading to survey the residents. The South of Penn Taskforce gets volunteers to go throughout the city of Reading to survey the neighborhood. The point of the surveying is to get a consensus of how the community feels about SOP’s engagement work. South of Penn wants to know what they should change about what their work and what suggestions the community has to do so. This is an easy way to get the community’s thoughts without asking too much out of them.
Our Surveying Experience:
On Friday, March 29th from 3-5 p.m., Abby, Katie, and Matt of the Green Team hit the streets to ask Reading residents about the South of Penn Taskforce. As a team, we went up and down 6th street, 7th street, Bingaman Street, and Laurel Street knocking on doors and trying to find participants. Of the two hours that we were outside, we were able to get 7 total surveys filled out. Tony Veloz, the South of Penn coordinator, told us that this was a good amount of surveys because only 20% of doors that are knocked on even answer the door. After a good amount of rejection, we finally got into a groove and got the 7 surveys. Mr. Veloz said that surveying is a great way for SOP to improve their Taskforce while also trying to get the community more involved. Of the 7 surveys that we got, all of the residents said that they would be willing to get more involved in their community, which is great news! Hopefully with the SOP events coming up in the next few months, residents will now come out and engage in their community more.
The surveying was a great activity and would be fun to do again in the near future. Our next service date will be on April 14th, from 1-4pm. The Green Team will be doing another community clean-up to help better the City of Reading.
Thanks for reading!
-The Green Team
