Global Youth Service Day 2012

This past Saturday, Meadow View teamed up to tackle trash in sunny Spring Lake Park in honor of Global Youth Service Day. Everyone was excited to be off-site and doing something different for the day, especially in a location as beautiful as Spring Lake. We knew the weather would be sunny and hot, a welcome change after what seemed like eons of cold and rain. As it turns out, picking up trash is quite the entertaining task, especially when your teammates are as hilarious as the mentors and TL’s at Meadow View. There were definitely a lot of jokes and a lot of laughter to be had which made the day seem like nothing more than a walk in the park, literally.

Spring Lake is actually a very clean space compared to other heavily-trafficked parks in Santa Rosa. We all felt that although this made our job quite simple, the park-goers who put their trash into one of the park’s multiple trash cans deserve some major kudos for taking care of the environment. Even though there wasn’t a ton of trash, we still got a lot accomplished and walked about three miles in the sun. Nobody minded the heat, though, we were all just happy to be out of the house and getting some exercise on such a lovely day. Everyone enjoyed seeing the other groups who dedicated their Saturday to making a difference such as the March of Dimers and the Boy Scouts. Many park-goers thanked us for what were doing. It really felt like we were all in it together, and that even though had our weekends to be getting to, the day turned out to be productive and a great team-building experience for all who attended.  

AmeriCorps Makes a Difference on Global Youth Service Day!

Katie Watson, AmeriCorps Team Leader

On April 16, 2011 CalSERVES spent the afternoon cleaning creeks throughout southwest Santa Rosa. The children, families and communities (and wildlife) we serve on a daily basis deserve to have the cleanest creeks possible to play and explore in.

Amanda Houlemard discovers a toy sword in Todd Creek!

The Taylor Mountain crew after all their hard work!

Meadow View found a piece of a car frame in Colgan creek. 

Thank you for getting it out!

The Meadow View team moving their many trash bags to a safe place.

82 CalSERVES AmeriCorps members were in attendance and tackled Roseland Creek, Colgan Creek and Todd Creek around Stony Point Road, Hearn Avenue, Petaluma Hill Road, Todd Road and Santa Rosa Avenue.

Charlie Ruda with a very pretty balloon, one that doesn't belong in a creek. In the garbage bag it goes.

The Roseland team after all their good work.

Tyler Rockey using all his strength to pull a shopping cart out.

The Sheppard team found not one, but two shopping carts. Wow!

CalSERVES participated in this event in accordance with Global Youth Service Day and partnered with the City of Santa Rosa. Global Youth Service Day is an annual campaign that celebrates and mobilizes the millions of children and youth who improve their communities each day of the year through service and service-learning.

Hannah Kooistra from RL Stevens ankle deep in Roseland Creek getting trash out.

There's the RL crew with all their trash bags... and fun picker-upers!

Ew, Wright found SO much garbage. Thank you for getting it all out!

The Wright team are superheroes!

We picked up garbage for nearly 2 hours and there was so much more to clean! We found tires, shopping carts, backpacks, parts of cars and bikes, toys, balloons, bottles, cans, and tons of food wrappers and garbage.

Sara from Kawana finds something interesting.

The Kawana ladies are so serious about creek cleaning!

The Bellevue boys getting into dangerous waters, the community is worth it though.

Bellevue sure found some icky stuff, thank you for your hard work!

We had a blast cleaning the creek and can't wait to do it again, it is so important that we keep our community clean for our students and their families!