Community Prepares for Biggest Volunteer Day of the Year; Sign-Up Still Possible
Keep Covington Beautiful is hosting its Great American Cleanup is this Saturday 9am-12pm and is expecting 800 volunteers to participate at 30 different sites throughout the City. The event is poised as the City’s collective spring cleaning community event.
Volunteers will be out in the community working to improve their neighborhoods. Activities include street cleaning, planting trees, planting flowers, planting a salsa garden at 6th District Elementary, clearing vacant lots for the ‘Grow the Cov Urban Agriculture’ project, tree planting in Mainstrasse Village and a host of other events planned in each of Covington’s 19 neighborhoods.
The City of Covington Staff is hosting a Riverfront clean-up group led by City Manager Larry Klein and Mayor Sherry Carran says, “The Great American Cleanup is the perfect event for people who want to contribute in making their community more inviting by being cleaner and by beautifying with plantings. These kinds of things send a message that people care about where they live, work and play. This day also builds a special camaraderie within our communities, creating a more sense of place amongst our residents and businesses that call this place home.”
If you haven’t signed up yet, don’t worry; volunteers can still join in on the fun.
For the downtown area, Renaissance Covington and Urban Partnership are hosting coffee and breakfast at Covington Arts, 27 W. 7th St., from 8:30 -9:00 and will be giving block-by-block assignments in the areas of Pike Street, Madison Avenue, and Scott Blvd. Any and all residents and downtown businesses are invited to participate. Renaissance Manager Katie Meyer says, “Great American Clean-up is the perfect opportunity for organizations such as Renaissance Covington and the Urban Partnership to work with the private sector stakeholders to make downtown more inviting.”
According to Shannon Ratterman, CGN Project Manager, “If individuals want to join a site that’s already in progress they can contact me and I can connect them to a site.” Shannon can be reached by email at Shannon@greatneighborhoods.org or by phone at 859-866-7524.
This year, Cincinnati Toolbank is sponsoring the event by providing project sites with necessary tools to get the job done. Title Sponsor Republic Services is helping out by sending their own group of volunteers and by providing gloves and reusable water bottles to volunteers.
Other sponsors include Friends of Covington, Covington Neighborhood Collaborative, Cors and Bassett, MainStrasse Village Association, Chas Seligman, Renaissance Covington, Old Seminary Square, Center for Great Neighborhoods and the City of Covington.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Covington Urban Forestry, UK Kenton County Extension Office and the Awesome Collective will be back again this year at the after party celebration with helpful information on how volunteers can continue their cleanup efforts throughout the year. Children, businesses, residents of all ages come together from the region to undertake beautification projects lending their hands at making our city a cleaner, greener more vibrant community for all of us to enjoy.
ABOUT KEEP COVINGTON BEAUTIFUL
Keep Covington Beautiful, Keep America Beautiful’s local chapter, provides resources and programs for Covington residents to help beautify neighborhoods and promote a greener city. This is accomplished through educational programs and volunteers events throughout the year that seek to clean and beautify our city. www.keepcovingtonbeautiful.com
ABOUT GREAT AMERICAN CLEANUP
Great American Cleanup is the nation’s largest annual community improvement program that harnesses the power of over 4.5 million volunteers to build vibrant communities. Each year over 1,200 affiliates and participating organizations engage volunteers to take action in their communities through programs that deliver positive and lasting impact through events focused on waste reduction, recycling, beautification and community greening. In 2013, 4.5 million Great American Cleanup volunteers worked tirelessly to return nearly $175 million in measurable benefits in 21,000 communities across the country.