On Saturday, April 5th Philadelphia’s Mayor Nutter kicked off the Spring Cleanup, a city-wide effort to beautify the City of Brotherly Love through organized trash pickup.  Staged at locations throughout the city, the program was aimed at getting communities to rally together to clean up their neighborhoods and instilling a sense of pride and accomplishment.  Members of the Community Energy team did their part to help out by gathering at Kendrick Recreation Center in Roxborough. 

Armed only with paint brushes and buckets of paint the group tackled a massive iron fence surrounding the perimeter of the Recreation Center.  The task of painting over 2,000 feet of fence was daunting.  It had been over 20 years since the fence was last painted and it showed.  Crumbling pale green paint and rust soon gave way to a gleaming black finish as an army of 175 paint volunteers swarmed the eight foot high fence.  In the end, the rusted iron proved no match for the group’s determination as the project was finished in four hours using over 150 gallons of paint.  Along with the accompanying trash pickup, the neighborhood looked rejuvenated and sparkling clean. 

One member of the CEI team happened to live across the street from the park and was happy for the chance to help out his neighborhood.  “Today showed us how much can be accomplished if we all help out with the little things,” said Philip Craig.  “We have to take responsibility to do our part for our communities and our environment.” 

This Philly Clean-up Day is just part of a larger initiative by Community Energy to better our community and the environment by volunteering on a monthly basis.  We’ll keep you posted on what we’re up to!