Who helped us with our service?
We teamed up with the City of Reading’s Department of Public Works. The Public Works Department provides a variety of programs that affect the health, convenience and comfort of Reading residents. Some examples of what Public Works deals with is graffiti removal and street light replacements. From this department, we teamed up with Laura Cordero, who is the Public Works Public Outreach and Education Coordinator. She educates students in grades K-12 on how they can better the community. Mrs. Cordero then paired us up with the South of Penn Taskforce, a non-profit that also works to better the City of Reading with block parties, financial literacy classes, and community clean-ups.
What we did for the community:
With the help of Mrs. Cordero and the South of Penn we were able to do: community surveying, community clean-ups, clean-up marketing, and environmental education.
One of the very first things we did with Mrs. Cordero and SOP was create flyers to advertise one of SOP’s clean-ups. SOP coordinator, Tony Veloz, taught us how to use CANVA, a free flyer-creation site, and we made practice flyers for the Great American Clean-up. These were made for Mr. Veloz to potentially use in the future with SOP.
Throughout the semester there were multiple clean up opportunities in Reading that we were a part of. On Saturday March 16th we worked with SOP to clean up the streets. We met at Kenny’s market on Bingaman street, and from there we split up into multiple groups. By the end of the clean-up, there was about 20-30 bags of trash collected.
Another cleanup that we were a part of was with the Youth Volunteer Corps. On Sunday April 14th, we worked with them to help kids cleanup City Park in Reading. Along with cleaning up the park, we also took part in pulling weeds, mulching and planting flowers.
The next activity that we got together to complete was the community surveying. On March 29th, we went out onto 6th and 7th streets of Reading to survey the community on their opinions of SOP, and what they want to see from the taskforce. We were able to collect 10 surveys for SOP to use to get a feel for the community and address the needs that the surveyors stated. As a result of surveying, we were able to inform the community about SOP and how they can get involved to help Reading. We were also able to help SOP get a feel of residents’ opinions on them and what events they need to add to get residents active in the community.
The final service activity we took part in was the Green Between the Courtyard Event at Reading High School on April 11th. Mrs. Cordero tasked us with informing the high school students about how to reduce their usage of single-use plastics. We created a poster filled with facts and pictures of single-use plastics in the environment. On our display table we also had 8 of the most commonly littered single-use plastics. When students came up to our table we described the harms of single-use plastics, how to reduce their usage, and alternatives to them. Since the biggest harm to single-use plastics is that they take a long time to break down, we played an interactive game with the students. Of the plastics we had on our display table, we had students guess how long it took for the plastics to break down. This game went over very well, students seemed engaged and were shocked to learn that some plastics took hundreds of years to break down. Some of the students even said that they were going to stop using some of the single-use plastics we had on our table. This event was fulfilling to take part in because we felt like we were helping to better the community by educating them on single-use plastics.
What we gained from our service:
The service component of our EACAP project was a fulfilling experience for all members in our group. The biggest lesson we learned from our service is that public education is super important in making environmental strides. This lesson came to light from our Reading High School event. If the community knew what changes they had to make to better the environment, they would be more likely to enact these changes. Along with this, we learned that there are small steps everyone can take to help better the environment. Something as simple as switching from plastic to reusable water bottles can help clean up the environment. The final lesson we learned is that community is important to make change. This was observed through our clean-ups and surveying. In both experiences, the people of Reading were eager to learn how to help the city and go out and enact change. In the clean-ups people from all over the city got together in an effort to better the environment. If the community comes together to create a change, the results will follow.
Our Message to the Youth of Reading:
Change is possible. If you are determined, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. We learned this through our service, with hard work and determination we were able to accomplish our service goals for this project. What were our service goals? For the Green Team to make any kind of impact on Reading’s community and environment. We accomplished this through the clean-ups, surveying, and public education. After doing our service we feel that the City is cleaner and people are thinking “greener”. If four college kids can come together to make an environmental difference in our community, so can you!
-The Green Team