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Region Three PALs Team Up for Trash Bash in Cocoa By Karen Fleming
A swimming pool, a portable basket-ball hoop, several old appliances, windows, concrete, tires, cinder blocks, rolls of carpet, pieces of fence, metal yard furniture, bikes, dead trees, branches and limbs, weeds: this is part of what forty-one PAL kids from Region Three pitched into a long roll-off dumpster on April 9, 2011 in Cocoa, Florida. The kids collected 5,130 pounds of trash, which is 2.56 tons! And it only took a little more than two hours! All of this was a regional community service project for the PAL kids to help out a homeowner who was unable to do the work herself. Their efforts were tied in with Trash Bash, an annual clean-up event. The Police Athletic League (PAL) Youth Directors’ groups taking part were from: Cocoa PAL, Palm Bay PAL, Satellite Beach PAL, West Melbourne PAL, and Brevard County Sheriff’s Office PAL. Trash Bash: All in a Day’s Work PAL’s work on April 9th was part of the new-this-year “House Clean-up Project,” tied into the Keep Brevard Beautiful Annual Trash Bash event, which has been going on now for twenty-eight years throughout Brevard County. The City of Cocoa was one of the cities participating in Trash Bash. The Trash Bash event itself has traditionally been a one-day event on the third Saturday in April when volunteers go out into the community to pick up trash. This year, that main clean-up day was April 16th. . A “friendly competition” exists among the cities who take part to see who can pick up the most trash and have the most volunteers. They are vying for the monetary prizes offered by one of the main sponsors of Trash Bash, Waste Management of Florida,Inc. “Last year, we [Cocoa] won both awards,” Lisa Moody, of Cocoa Leisure Services, told PAL ILLUSTRATED. “We, in turn, gave it back to the non-profit organizations that helped us collect the trash.” This year, as well, Cocoa won the prizes! Better Than Reality TV How did the new House Clean-up Project become part of Trash Bash this year in Cocoa? Lisa Moody, who was the mastermind in the conception of the new project, remembered her AmeriCorps days in the 1990’s, helping the elderly and disabled do what they could not do for themselves, by cleaning up their yards and hauling off trash and debris. “It was something that was very fulfilling to me a long time ago,” she said. “I like the elderly, so if I can help them out in any way, I certainly like to do that.” In addition to wanting to help the elderly and disabled, Lisa thought adding house clean-ups to the Trash Bash event would enhance Cocoa’s chances of winning the friendly competition again because the calculations of amounts of trash and numbers of volunteers used to decide the winner of the friendly competition are not limited to efforts on the third Saturday event, but can include other trash pick-up events throughout the month of April. Lisa, remembering AmeriCorps, initiated The House Clean-up Project this year. Finding homeowners who needed help was the next step. Lisa contacted Margie Miles, an employee with Cocoa Community Development’s Residential Services Department, who keeps a list of the elderly and disabled living within Cocoa city limits. Officer Debra Davis, of Cocoa PAL, worked with Lisa in these early planning days. They were given four houses originally, one for each of the four Saturday clean-ups planned for April, but Debra said, “When we looked at those properties, they were all like neatly manicured . . . and we thought, ‘We could go out there, but there’s not going to be much work to do.’ We wanted to pick something that would really impact the community. So we [Lisa and I] got the entire list [of 165 homes], and we drove around for two days and found homes that really needed our help. It was a long process, and a lot of the properties really didn’t need that much help. The home that Cocoa PAL worked on actually wasn’t even on that list. We found it as we were driving by. We got the owner’s information and contacted them on our own.” Ready and Willing to Make a Difference Lisa asked the Volunteers of America in Florida—a veteran’s transitional housing program—to work with her on the first house on April 2nd. Region Three PALs worked on the second house on April 9th. April 16th was not a house-clean-up day, but instead was the main city-wide clean-up with many other groups and individuals, too, taking part. On April 23rd, Cocoa Cub Scout Pack 321 cleaned up a woman’s yard. On April 30th, the owners of the selected house, decided they didn’t want to participate, so the back-up plan called for cleaning the Jackson Street ditch.
Helping Out Feels Good How did the PAL kids cope with such heavy work at the April 9th homeowner’s clean-up? “They actually really enjoyed themselves,” Officer Debra Davis said. “Not a single one of them complained. They knew why they were there and they knew they were helping out somebody else who was less fortunate than them, who really couldn’t take care of their property themselves. “They did a lot of hard work,” Debra continued. “They actually tore down an above-ground swimming pool that was in the back yard. We really cleaned up the yard a lot, used the weed whacker, and even put down some mulch in the front yard. When we got done, it looked like a whole new yard.” April 9th was a “glorious” day, with temperatures in the upper eighties. “It was hot,” Debra remembered, “but the city donated a lot of water for the kids to keep hydrated. I was so proud of the kids. They did a great job. They really put a lot of hard work into it.” The mayor of Cocoa, Mike Blake, along with Cocoa police officers, and Sonja Mitchell, program manager of Cocoa PAL, came out to work with the PAL volunteers. “Everyone who was there, worked,” Debra told us. “We did an awesome job,” Lisa observed. “It was a wonderful experience for all of them.” After the clean-up, the PAL Youth Directors went to the Cocoa Civic Center for their PAL Region Three meeting, and enjoyed pizza. The house where the PAL kids worked belonged to a woman who had become so ill, she had to leave her home and move in with her daughter. For many years, this woman had been unable to deal with the debris and junk that was accumulating in her yard. “We hauled it off for her, no charge to her,” Lisa told PAL ILLUSTRATED. Later, a neighbor told Lisa, “It’s so nice to look outside the house and not see the rolls of carpet out there and the trash and debris.” So, Lisa commented to us, “It benefits not only the homeowner, but also the neighborhood as well.” This fits in well with the mission of Keep Brevard Beautiful: Motivate and educate businesses, schools, group and individual partnerships to reduce litter, recycle and beautify for the environmental and economic benefit of Brevard County. It’s in the Bag for Trash Bash Day Volunteers On April 16th, on thirty-seven sites throughout the City of Cocoa, 313 volunteers worked to help make Cocoa look better. The clean-up lasted about three hours, from about eight o’clock in the morning until eleven. Organizations such as the Boy Scouts, Top Teens of America, Cocoa’s Kiwanis Club, several elementary schools along with random individuals from the community joined forces to get the job done. After the clean-up, they met back at Cocoa’s River Front Park for a big party, all free for the volunteers. Cocoa Main Street (an organization that works to keep the main streets of Cocoa looking nice, Lisa explained) and the Fire Department grilled hot dogs all day long and a band entertained with great music. This year, Lisa recruited volunteers for Trash Bash by dressing up in a trash can costume and going to speak to organizations and schools in the county. “I’ve been a snow-flake, a Christmas tree, a bumble-bee, a gorilla in a pink tutu, and now a trash can.” When she went to talk to Cocoa’s City Council, Lisa reported that a gentleman said, “If you can dress up like a trash can and come in council, be on television, and talk about this, then I’ll show up on Saturday and help you clean up.” Sure enough he did. “I had a lot of kids participate in the event because I walked through their lunchroom cafeteria in a trash can, and they’re like ‘OMG—look at that lady!’” The two main sponsors of the event were Waste Management of Florida, Inc., and the Florida Inland Navigation District. Waste Management provided the roll-off dumpsters and portable toilets for each of the home clean-up sites, as well as putting up the prize money for the friendly competition between the communities. Cocoa Main Street donated $1500 so the volunteers could be given free Trash Bash T-Shirts. Rockledge Gardens donated flowering plants for two of the home clean-ups. During the month of April, 418 Trash Bash volunteers collected 21,000 pounds of trash, debris and garbage, equaling about 10.5 tons. Cocoa is now a lot cleaner! The Keep Brevard Beautiful website reminds us of Margaret Meads’ famous aphorism: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” PAL kids: You have helped change the world!
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