By: Travis Cochran

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Listen to an audio story from Annenberg Radio News:

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Members of the community speak about the clean up:

“It’s beneficial for young people to get out and be a part of maintaining and cleaning and sprucing up their own community,” one woman said. “That in and of itself is a great impact.”

Another person involved in the clean up added, “Overall, it’s pretty good. We’ve been cleaning up. It feels good to clean up a community with all of this dirt and trash everywhere.”

“When we have some graffiti on, it just keeps happening,” a man at the event said. “It’s a cycle. Everybody wants to represent something, so when we have some graffiti in the area, it affects our corridor. It affects our small businesses.”

One man says he’s a believer in programs that helps the community, especially when it comes to inner city youth.

“They may have parents who work two, maybe even three, jobs or long shifts,” he said. “It gives them programs to be in while their parents are away at work, instead of just being at home or being on the streets with nothing to do.”

“A lot of them tell me they don’t litter no more,” another event-goer said. “They used to litter before, but working here, they know how hard it is to pick up the trash, so they stopped littering.”

“It shows that this community is not being left behind,” a man said. “The community does care about it. The Coalition for Responsible Community Development is very proud to assist with the clean up.”

Another woman in the community praised the coalition’s efforts to keep the city street clean.

“That’s one of the reasons I moved into this area because when I was looking for places, I noticed how clean and well-kept the neighborhood is,” she said. “That’s directly due to CRCD that has a youth program and a street cleaning program.”