Monday 30 April 2018

Cleaning Up Can Be Contagious


This past Saturday we once again had our annual Pitch in Project. This year with the late spring weather and an abundance of mud, I decided to get to the park a little earlier to scope it out. When we arrived we ran into our neighbor with her two young girls having lunch at the park.  While we waited for the rest of our group to arrive we started to pick up garbage.  It only took minutes before these two lovely young ladies pulled on a pair of gloves, grabbed a bag a started racing each other to get to the garbage first, showing just how contagious cleaning up can be. Earlier in the week Darcy witnessed our three neighbor kids between the ages of 4-7, run over to one of the other neighbors house with a handful of bags and a garden trowel. They knocked on the door and asked the neighbor if they could clean up all the dog poop in his backyard.  To say the gentleman was somewhat stunned is an understatement but what grabbed more attention was how excited these kids were to just do something nice. Fast forward a couple of days.  Along our back yard runs the edge of town with a well-used trail system.  Through the wooden fence a group of preschool age children could be heard singing a garbage picking song as they helped clean up and fill bags.  Kids are soooo awesome!  Now I wasn’t fortunate to witness either of these days but as Darcy replayed them for me my heart smiled. 

Despite the fact that there are many who may not think twice of carelessly tossing their garbage out the window, there are other groups such as our team that aren’t scared to spend a Saturday in rubber gloves, tip toeing through the mud and dodging the pokey branches to the eyes. In doing so we are not only taking care of our environment and community but setting examples to those around us. As parents and instructors, as neighborhood children with a shiny shovel and handful of bags to fill or as a preschooler who is moving with the beat of their own song, we are making a huge impact in our community and at the same time making those who witness our actions aware that our community does not stay clean magically but rather through the efforts of many.

Although some events are completed in a day, not to be looked at again till next year, this is a project that can and should continue all year long.  Unfortunately there is never a shortage of garbage lying around but if everyone picks up a piece here and there in their travels, the results are going to be huge! Every little effort works together to accomplish bigger things.

I know it is impossible to pick a day for an event like this that will work for everyone and things come up in life but I would like to say a huge thanks to those that were able to make it out and to those who had wanted to but weren’t able to.  Many hands make the load light!

Alana Regier

 
Picture of the week from last weekend in Jasper.  Got in trouble from the CN guy for being on the tracks, oops my bad!
 

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