Sheyla Michell

For the community project, I chose to volunteer in the Elizabeth River Clean Up Day that took place on Friday, April 20, 2018. The event was organized by Professor Daniela Shebitz as part of the Unions County Adopt a park program. The purpose of this volunteer project was to collect garbage from the river that is located in next to soccer field on Kean’s East campus.

We were asked to meet at the east campus soccer fields at 9:50 am for the check-in, along with my class partners Katherine, Fabio, Johan and Aron we were on time and ready to start. It was around 30 volunteers that we have to complete a goal and that was to collect garbage as much as possible, and separate plastic and garbage so we can recycle. As soon as we got the tools to start the cleaning we start working because the time was short and we were trying to do as much as possible. On the way down the path I was very surprised of the amount of garbage that was collected in the trees and on the floor, at the beginning I feel very disappointed about myself because I take the trolleybus of Kean University that crosses that river and I have never notice how our environment is so contaminated and how much I can contribute to my community just be given 2 hours of my time. The instructions were that someone holds the garbage bag and the other one picks up the garbage but we decide to place the garbage in the floor and everyone take the garbage this way we were going to be able to collect more. We were ready to get dirty and get in the river because we knew that the majority of the garbage is in the water and on the fallen trees we all have waterproof boots so it was not a problem for anyone.

The end results were very satisfactory because as a team we were able to collect 4 large garbage back in which two of them were bottles and the other two were garbage. During the clean up one of our team members was able to find a piece of a car inside the river and he was a winner of a $50 chipotle gift card as a reward. I never expected that this type of appliance can be found in the river it was very disappointed and sad to be a witness to this scene.

By volunteering to this community project I realize how much our environment needs us and how little we give back to it, after completing this community project I want to be able to be more involve and contribute as much as I can to give a better future environment to future generations.

Above is a picture of how much garbage we collect by working together as a team and all the hard work that we put into this day.