Community Project Report- Dania Arias

Dania Arias' Community Project

For the Community project I did the activity of doing a park and waterfront cleanup in Elizabeth New Jersey with my Church. The Church I attend is “The World Mission Society Church of God”, we believe in God the Father and God the Mother, as testified in the Bible. The Church of God has over 2.5 million members across the world in 175 countries. The Church of God has been highly recognized by many countries and governments for their services hours to the community around them and the people. For example, The Church of God was awarded with the U.S. President’s Volunteer Service Award Gold & Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, awarded with the U.S. President’s Volunteer Service Award Gold in 2014,and awarded with the U.S. President’s Volunteer Service Award Gold in 2015. In addition, on June 2, 2016 The Church of God received the highest award given to volunteer groups across the U.K. The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Moreover, in all the countries where The Church of God is, we follow the teachings of God to be “the light and salt of the world” and to show through our actions the love of God and teachings of Heavenly Mother. With the teachings of Heavenly Mother that “Its is more blessed to give love than to receive”, The Church of God is active in doing worldwide volunteer services beyond nations, race, and religion. Not only in environmental cleanup, but, in neighborly love, disaster relief, and community support The Church of God is to be present and active.  

On March 18, 2018 we conduct a park and waterfront cleanup for the city of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Over 40 volunteers from the Church of God where present in the cleanup. The cleanup was done in Jackson Park and Veterans Memorial Waterfront where we pick up all type of trash. The purpose of the event was to show Mother’s Love by cleaning  the communities around us. This was not only conduct in New Jersey but also in Dominican Republic a cleanup was done in the Streets of one of their major city. The Church of God wants to help beautify our community and show the love of God by been example to our community of cleaning the Park and waterfront. I choose this project to cleanup with my Church, because it allows me to become humble, aware of my community, and to help the community around me. Also, allows me to take action in cleaning the city and taking care of our environment. During the event we were able to partner with the city of Elizabeth’s Counsel man Manny Grova. The city of Elizabeth provide The Church of God members with trash bags, gloves, trash picker, and ra… We were all organized in teams to clean simultaneously the park by section. We pickup all type of trash from bottles, bags, caps, cigarette filters, and collected branches that where all over the park because of the hard winds during past days. Because of the team work and fast paced of all working in unity, we were able to go to the second location the Veterans Memorial Waterfront were we were able to pickup all type of trash that has been accumulated in the last year even under the ground. It was a very cold day under the 30 Fahrenheit mark, even thot it was cold at 8am I was on the site to make sure I was on time and ready. It was truly an amazing opportunity to go out to the community of Elizabeth to help our environment. I was in a team and we in unity clean very fast and filled more than three bags in a hour. Afterwards, we went walking to the Veterans Memorial Waterfront and continue to clean everything. It was an amazing opportunity to show the love of God with our actions and even though it was very cold we all enjoy and were very hard to clean in unity. It was amazing that even the News12 New Jersey came to the site where we were cleaning to film us all working together and show the effort that all members of The Church of God were doing to help our community. From my point of view is essential not to stay cross handed and just comment that we should take care of our environment but we should take action now and do the most that we can in our communities. It is important that we take care of the places where we are nearest to. It was an overall  amazing experience. 

News12 Video Report: http://newjersey.news12.com/story/37751008/volunteers-help-clean-up-elizabeth-parks