Keep My Neighborhood Clean!

On April 16, the awesome kids at La Escuela Fratney's Boys and Girls Club participated in Global Youth Service Day by picking up trash in the grounds around their school.

"I feel like a detective!" said Aliciayana, a third grade member of the Boys and Girls Club, "Some of this stuff is just gross."

The kids cleaned up the section of Fratney between Concordia and Auer, then moved west along Auer before heading across the playground to deposit their trash. Though the area is relatively small, the kids found plenty to pick up, from bottle caps and cigarette butts to shredded plastic bags left over from winter. Best of all it was fun! The kids took on a playful competition, each trying to fill their trash bags with the most interesting trash, or the largest pieces.

"You don't have to be lady-like about it," said Rosemary to her peers as she dug in to extract some small bits of plastic from the ground. It was a beautiful day to be outside and the kids seemed anxious to move past school grounds.

Rosario, the Boys and Girls Club coordinator said with more volunteers and parental permission, the kids could potentially be able to venture further into the neighborhoods to help out there, where people who might have trouble getting at the trash live.

The 'Keep my neighborhood clean' project was headed by the Boys and Girls Club Torch members and coordinated by the Institute for Service Learning out of UWM