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

On Thursday, April 11th two members of the Green Team went to Reading High School to present on how to reduce the usage of single-use plastics. We had a poster filled with facts and pictures of the effects of single-use plastics. When students would stop by our station we played a guessing game with them.

We started the game by showing them the 8 most common items dumped into the ocean. These items consisted of: plastic water bottles, plastic bags, plastic cutlery, and five other items similar to these. We informed students that plastics do NOT biodegrade, but instead they slowly break up over many years. When the plastics break down they turn into microplastics which release harmful chemicals into the waters. The chemicals harm our water quality, our animals, and our own health. After this information was distributed, the students participated in a guessing game where they had to guess how many years it took one of the eight single-use plastics on the table to break down. During the guessing game, we also presented to students alternatives to single-use plastics such as reusable water bottles and mason jars. When the student guessed correctly, they were given candy as a prize.

Doing this presentation was very rewarding to do because it was awesome to see the students learn about something that directly affects them. Most students were shocked at our facts and said that they need to change their usage of single-use plastics. We believe that this presentation will help to better Reading’s environment because now the students will want to reduce their usage of plastics.

The Green Team will also be doing a Community Clean up this weekend at City Park in Reading. If you are available, please feel free to stop by and help clean-up the city!

-The Green Team

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

On Thursday, March 14th the Green Team met up to make progress on our EACAP research. Matt, Katie, Jamie, and Abby were all present for the duration of our meeting. We took advantage of class time, and worked during that hour. The main focus of our meeting was to get a significant amount of research done for our outline and research report. We each picked a subject listed and found sources that expanded on the topics. We started to put together an outline for the research report, where we color coded each of our work. The final thing we completed during our work session was the progress log. We updated our service hours and outside work that we have been doing for the project.

This upcoming weekend we will be completing our first community clean-up and we are all excited to be helping the Reading community.

-The Green Team

What is the Public Works of Reading?

On Monday, February 4th the Green Team met up with our project coordinator, Mrs. Laura Cordero, to discuss the details of our project. Mrs. Cordero is the Outreach and Education Coordinator for the City of Reading. The first part of our meeting was learning about the Public Works system. Mrs. Cordero told us that the Public Works strives to build, maintain, and operate the public infrastructure in a way that protects the environment and preserves the city for future generations. In a day, the Public Works can deal with anything from graffiti removal to fixing traffic lights. Mrs. Cordero specifically deals with teaching students about the Public Works and how they can play a role in helping the environment. With being new to Reading, this is her first project with Penn State Berks. After the brief overview, she dove right into what our service opportunities would be.

What are our service responsibilities?

As a team, we will be doing community clean-ups as a part of our 8-hour service requirement. We are going to work with an independent task force called South of Penn, who organizes monthly clean-ups throughout the city. We have a total of three weekend clean-ups in March and April. Over the course of the next two months, we will be working together with the community to clean up Reading as much as we can. On top of the field work, we will be doing other research and projects to help South of Penn, since this organization is a non-profit we will be doing whatever we can to assist the group in its needs. Whether that is creating media-marketing posts for them to upload in the future, surveying the residents of Reading to find out their wants are, or making social media videos of the clean-up events. Mrs. Cordero said that it is unlikely we can get all 8-hours of service from just field work so it is important that we pick one of these extra assignments and work on it to finish out our hours.

We are all very excited to get started with our service so that we can make an impact on the City of Reading. We cannot wait to get hands-on experience from the clean-ups and further our environmental learning.

The Green Team