Community Project Report- Perla Brito

Perla Brito's Community Project

Step Up - Clean Up

Community service isn't just words, but an opportunity in life to contribute one's time to helping others and making a difference in society; and thus a better place to live for all. AmeriCorps engages more than 80,000 Americans in intensive service each year at approximately 20,000 unique sites including nonprofits, schools, public agencies, and community and faith-based groups across the country. The program was found in 1994 and more than 1 million AmeriCorps members have contributed in billion hours in service across America while working on solving pressing problems and mobilizing more than 2.3 million volunteers for the organizations they serve.

As an AmeriCorps member, I have had the opportunity to serve my community in several occasions through the Step up Program. Step Up For Students and AmeriCorps are partnering together to help with academic achievements in local schools. As the program coordinator in my community, I have recruited approximately 25 students from the Academy for Urban Leadership charter school in the city of Perth Amboy.  Saturday,  April 14^th, the Clean up event took place.  The event was sponsored by the AmeriCorps Program and the city of Perth Amboy. The Direct of the program Yamilet Martinez and the Major of the city Awilda Diaz helped us by providing the program, the tools and equipment we needed to be able to run the event. The event was promoted in the public schools of Perth Amboy and also nonprofit organizations, such as the Salvation Army.

The purpose of this community services event was to go to through the main streets in the small city and pick up as much garbage as we could. Garbage that we found in the floor and that was affecting the city in a significant way. The event was held for about 4 hours, from 10am to 2pm.

During the event we covered about 35 streets of the city and we had 3 main points were we would meet to put the bag of garbage that we have collected.  The way it worked was in group of 3 students and one Adult, a total of 4 people walking through the streets picking up the garbage that they found in their way. The picture below, shows a how much garbage we found in our city and we were able to collect it as a group in about 1 or 2 hours.

I chose this event because I saw it as an opportunity to open people’s eyes and see the situation that our city is in. During the event, it was amazing how some of the student’s family, friends and even unrelated people that notice what we were doing started helping us to clean our city. During the event we provided refreshments and snacks to the students and all of the participants we had over the day. A total of 43 people helped clean our community. We had also provide shirts to the people participating, that way we could identify the people that were involve in the event.

The outcome is what impacted me the most. The streets were cleaner, the students had fun and were able to actually see what our city is going through.  After the event I conducted a workshop, asking for opinions, and feedback about the event. The students were so surprise about the amount of garbage that was affecting our small city and that is cause by the its own residents. They were so happy that as a program we were able to do something to make it better.




Over the years, the program has been trying to promote this event but never received a good outcome. Not a lot people would show up and help clean our city. This year approximately 43 people, plus more about 8 AmeriCorps members came and made a difference. Overall, the event was a success.  The streets of the city of Perth Amboy were cleaner, my students received academic credit for their community services assignment, they had fun, but most important they realized and learned that they were part of the problem and now they have become part of the solution.