This week, I ran my first session of Greener and Cleaner Community. Overall, I think it went pretty well. In the beginning, there was a small problem because one of my participants was late, which made the session run longer then expected. Along the walk, everything went well, and we picked up a lot of garbage, more than I expected. Surprisingly, Selkirk had a lot of litter, which was mostly food containers and bags, even though there is a garbage can next to the playground, which makes me think that kids playing at Selkirk at either uneducated about littering or are just too lazy to walk to the garbage can. I think that we picked up most of the garbage along the route, but it is very possible that we missed some because of the small number of people and I didn't want to keep the participants for too long and be behind schedule. It also turned out that 4 participants may have been the perfect number of people, since there was only 3 tongs and one bucket. A neighbour even gave us two thumbs up when she saw us picking up garbage near her house! Once the session was over and I emptied out the garbage to take pictures, it was very time consuming and troublesome to sweep it all up with a broom and dustpan, so for next week it would be good to have another way of cleaning it up (maybe with a shovel).
Moment of the Week:
Why did the following location appear as a place where you would include in a community pick up with your group of volunteers? Brewer's Park was one of the locations I chose for a community pick up because since many kids, families, day camps, and members of the community frequently visit this park, I thought it would be a place with lots of litter to pick up. Also, because many people frequent Brewer's Park, I wanted to keep it clean and litter-free for the community to enjoy. What worked during this session? What didn't work? This session, the system of having 3 people carrying tongs, one person holding the bucket, and myself leading the group worked well, and we picked up a lot of garbage and litter in about an hour, about a quarter of a trash bag. What didn't work well this session was the way I collected data on what kind of garbage we picked up. Also, the way I emptied the garbage at the end of the walk didn't work because I had to sweep it all back up using a broom and dust pan, which was very time consuming. For the next session, I fixed these problems by keeping better track of what we picked up, so that I didn't have to empty out the garbage at the end to take pictures. |