Community Clean Up

EAST VAN COMMUNITY CLEAN UP

It's a beautiful Saturday morning in October. I'm driving down Hasting St. heading towards East Van to a neighborhood known as Hastings Sunrise. Today's volunteer experience will involve joining the Hastings Sunrise Community Policing Center to do a community clean up. A community clean up which happens every two weeks.

It's about 9:45 am as I enter into the small courtyard tucked behind a gate off of Hastings. There are already a couple of volunteers preparing the tools we will need for todays clean up.

There is a large box of bright orange and yellow vests with “Community Volunteers” on the back. A few boxes of latex gloves cover the table, plastic bags line the wall, and a hockey bag full of what looks like over sized tweezers sits open on the ground waiting.

After signing the form in the office and checking in, I head outside to help set up. By 9:55am there are 21 volunteers. All of us huddled in the tiny alcove, vests and gloves on, and carrying our garbage bags and our garbage pickers. What I'm impressed with right away, besides the large number of volunteers, is that they are of all different ages. There are even a couple of families here to help, with children aged 8-12.

Due to the nature of the program I wont be sharing names or pictures of the unsuspecting volunteers who may not want to be in a blog. Some of them also volunteer in other Policing programs so I will respect their privacy.

After a short orientation where we are told the basics, such as, dont pick up garbage with your hands, dont jump in front of cars to get garbage, you know.............the common sense sort of stuff.

Now we are off! A herd of neon vested large tweezer carrying volunteers head down the street. We get right to work, picking up starbucks cups on the side of the walk, macdonalds bags, wrappers of all sorts.

At first the garbage pickers feel awkward. Its a bit like learning how to use chopsticks, except these are monterous chopsticks. I can barley pick anything up and I feel a lot like Edward Scissor Hands. A learning curve we all seem to be going through as I look over to see my team mates also struggling with their oversized tweezers.

We head to the residential streets and slowly make our way down towards a park, picking up garbage as we go. Its a perfect fall day, the sun is shining, fall leaves adorn the sidwalks, dew sparkles off the blades of grass, the cigarette butts........Wait.....what?! The cigarette butts? Yes, the cigarette butts. Everywhere!

If picking up cups and bags was hard, how am I going to get these little pesky things?

We eventually make it to the park, splitting up to hunt for garbage, and you guessed it, cigarette butts. We've been at this for about half an hour now and I am actually getting good at using these tweezers. Infact this is relaxing, a lot like a meditation. I get lost in the repetative movements. I must be picking up more than I realize because my bag is getting heavy. Who knew cigarette butts would add up to so much weight. Then again it could be the one shoe I found and the few soggy socks.

I get so emersed in what I am doing I lose track of time. I look up to realize my team is gone. Im left alone in the park, my fellow neon vested team mates long gone. Luckily they are not hard to find since 10 people in bright yellow really stand out.

Our team leader, who has been volunteering with this program since 2012, leads us through more of the neighborhood. This part of vancouver has an older charm to it. I can see why so many of its residents are eager to come out and help keep the streets clean. These beautiful trees create a vibrant canopy over one of the streets we walked.

Time has gone by quickly. While learning how to use a new tool, chatting with some nice people, and enjoying walking around an area that is new to me, two hours has managed to pass like nothing. Each community clean up shift is 10am to 12pm, and it is now 11:50am so our team leader turns us towards the Community Policing Center to begin our journey back.

Although there are so many of us and it seemed as though the majority of what we picked up was small and light and of course mostly cigarette butts, this is what we managed to come back with. Wow, that's a lot.

So now to the best part. It turns out that after volunteering for the community clean up , they also provide lunch. I didn't know this when I chose to volunteer here. No really ......I swear! I would have done it anyway. I even brought my own lunch.

But hey, today they bought pizza for everyone, so no way am I passing that up. Not one person did. We all crowded in to the office to partake in the feast. For the first 10 minutes there was only the sound of chewing. We were all so focused on our pizza that no one spoke. Turns out garbage picking works up an appetite. After waiting for everyone to finish their first piece, I bravely broke the silence to ask if anyone had done this before. It turns out they were all new like me. When I asked if any of them would do it again, everyone enthusiastically said yes.

I am in full agreement with them. Even with out the pizza, this was an enjoyable experience that I would look forward to doing again. It was inspiring to see how much this organization does for the community, with the clean up program, various patrols, saftey programs that they offer and many more. What really surprised me was to learn that there is only one paid police officer working there. Everyone else is just volunteering their time. Now THAT is amazing!

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EAST VAN COMMUNITY CLEAN UP

So if this story inspired you. If you want to learn how to use over sized tweezers, walk around a cool neighborhood and meet some new friends, well then all of the info is down below if you want to sign up. Who knows.....maybe I'll see you there!

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