Most of us in the OWENA are concerned about the trash in our neighborhood. Please provide any ideas you have about eliminating this problem and making our neighboorhood more beautiful.

By Stef

Reply to trash concerns

We should all start by picking up the trash around our own homes and recognizing those who do.
We could also have weekly ''street'' clean up days, where our neighbors on our designated streets could bring a trash bag and pick up the litter together. This could also be a way to get to know our neighbors. Each street could have their own committee and decide on ways to get others involved.

trash

I like your idea. I agree that we should all pick up litter around our own homes and that those who do should be recognized. I think it would be great if we could get kids involved in this also. Perhaps group of kids could make up teams that are in charge of their street and take part in and coordinate a weekly or bi-weekily cleanup. Perhaps we could somehow reward them for their efforts to keep them motivated.

By Stef

motivating the kids

We would need volunteers to host and a way to get the word out to the kids, but perhaps a good way of motivating the kids would be to offer cookies and hot chocolate at someone's house after cleaning. This is pretty inexpensive and only helps facilitate building realtionships and establishing ''safe houses'' for the kids in our neighborhood. And by contacting the parents to make sure they know where their kids are for the hot chocolate, we would be building relationships with the parents and encouraging good parenting skills. I think doing this every week sounds a little overwhelming (though the streets could probably use to be cleaned this often) but every other week or once a month would be good. The frequency of these events would most likely be determined by the host(s). Let me know what you think. Are there any willing people? How do we put legs on these ideas?

~Lezlie McCrory

By Lezlie