If you live in a city it is not very rare to see some trash littering the street and sidewalks. People become numb to all of this and begin to lose touch with how important it is to clean up after themselves. This past semester The Green Guys consisting of Eric Muttik, Dell Jensen, Yufei He, and Chandler Bedwell helped improve the city of Reading one piece of trash at a time. Prior to meeting with Laura Cordero of the City of Reading public works department we were quite unsure what we were getting ourselves into and what exactly we could do to help our community. Meeting with Laura truly opened our eyes to all of the projects that the public works department has to manage, and just how hard it is for them to keep up with everything. Laura introduced us to a few non profits such as South of Penn Taskforce and Barrio Allegrio and explained in great depth just how important groups like these are to our communities, but how they often go unnoticed. The first service project we did involved meeting with SOP and getting to know all about them and how they prioritize educating the public about sustainability and taking pride in ones’ community. As a group we made fliers that could potentially be handed out to the public providing information about the group and what they stand for. For our first real service came not long after we made the fliers, and we were tasked with cleaning a few blocks within Reading, not far from our school. SOP tasked us along with other volunteers to specific areas in which to clean up the sidewalks, streets, and other areas around us. Within the two hours that was allotted our team had amassed around 15-20 bags of trash from an area not all that large. This was quite surprising and we found that no matter how much we picked up there was always more just around the corner. The second service outing we had was at Global Youth Service day at City Park in Reading. For this event we were not only tasked with the cleaning up and maintenance of the park, but we also became team leaders helping direct middle and high schoolers to participate. Some of the tasks that we accomplished as a team was the weeding, mulching, and planting of flowers around several monuments as well as the collection of any debris that was found. This was by far our favorite event as we really got to see the finished result of our hard work. The park looked significantly better after all of the volunteers put their best efforts into making it a better place. The final cleaning project we took part in was the Schuylkill River Trail clean up. This took place at the head of the trail and we were tasked with performing trail maintenance along with cleaning up the trail as we go. The amount of trash we found here was also alarming. By the end of this event the trail looked substantially better. As a whole our team learned just how important it is to be mindful of what we do with our waste and instead of seeing that piece of trash on the ground and thinking someone else will get that, be proactive and understand that if we want our communities to stay as nice as possible it is up to every single person as an individual to make a concerted effort to do the little things even if they do not seem like much. Events like Global Youth Service day are also critical as the youth get to see hands on what a change they can make is exceedingly important as it teaches them the significance of taking pride in their community. If there is anything that The Green Guys could teach others it would be to understand that change does not start by waiting around, it takes active prideful members of a community to make and maintain clean, happy cities.
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