Keep Our City Clean, Build a Park!

At Heal the Bay we are not usually in the business of makeovers. But for the past few years, we’ve been working with Wisdom Academy of Young Scientists (WAYS) to revamp a gray empty lot in South LA into a glorious, green outdoor community space.

This Saturday, April 27, you can be part of transforming a neighborhood hit hard by urban blight, by joining us for a cleanup around the future home of WAYS Reading and Fitness Park.

This cleanup is the continuation of the fun work we undertook in September when we organized a cleanup of the site as part of Coastal Cleanup Day and invited a group of neighborhood students to come out and paint the planter boxes and benches.  Some of the kids happily painted “Keep the City Clean” signs by their own choice.  

Then in October, we hosted a Fall Festival with over 30 families attending to carve pumpkins, get their faces painted, create holiday masks, learn about the WAYS park project, and discuss their visions of the park.

To ring out the year, we hosted 20 neighborhood families for a winter holiday-themed festival, with activities like creating ornaments and picture frames from everyday materials to hang as decorations. We also continued to reach out to residents about the park project.

Now, on April 27, as part of GOOD’s Neighborday, we’ll be hosting an Earth Month “Re-Paint & Re-Plant” community cleanup where local students will help replant some of our planter boxes, paint over graffiti and put up some art of their own. In addition, to help address illegal dumping in their community we are having a neighborhood bulky-item drop off. 

— Stephen Mejia

Urban Programs Coordinator

 Can’t make it? You can still support our work in South Los Angeles, by becoming a member of Heal the Bay.