Partners in Hope
 
 
A Community, not just a neighborhood
Our friendship with Keep Austin Beautiful is great
The clean-ups started with a teacher, Mr. Tovar
He mobilized students and parents to clean the creek
Parents help
Parents help II
The creek is clean!
Only a few of the many bags
The neighborhood was pretty trashed
Westlake Hills II
Westlake Hills III
Westlake Hills V
Trash in April 2005
Trash in April 2005 II
Trash in April 2005 III
Trash in April 2005 IV
Trash in April 2005 VI
Trash in April 2005 VII
Trash in April 2005 X
Trash in April 2005 XI
Emily Timm and the Home Depot day laborers volunteer
Pete and Mike collected over 40 tires on rims in April
Martha Tamez and family
We always have a cookout after clean-ups
Cookout
Moonwalk for the kids
Allen and Pete
Natalie in her CleanSweep t-shirt
Cookout II
The best part! The city comes to take the trash
A couch gets crunched
Up
and in
A clean Buttermilk creek
The center of our neighborhood looking good
Neighbors build the seniors vegetable garden
Some of the crew that built the senior garden
A youth group came to join in November ‘06 clean-up
Youth group II
Youth group III
Youth group IV
We always team volunteers with neighbors
Putting sealant on the new senior garden
Garden II
Garden III
Sealing the school picnic tables built by neighbors
Tamale Dinner with neighbors after clean-up
Tamale Dinner
Tamale Dinner II
Tamale Dinner III
UT volunteers at KAB service day ‘06
Kids have the clean-up spirit
Kids II
UT volunteers beautify the St. John pool area
The Bribescas and UT volunteers
Cleaning the pool area
UT volunteers bag leaves
Pete and UT volunteers build school benches at KAB day
Lots of kids came to join in at UT service day, Feb. 06
Mr. Tovar and kids at UT service day
Some of the UT student volunteers
Working with KAB has been a great partnership!
Our incredible friend Monica  from KAB
Mr. Tovar and Picle Kids with KAB trophy
KAB Trophy for Litter Abatement in 05
Vincent and kids at KAB luncheon
David Delgado and Martha Tamez at KAB luncheon
Emily Timm clears a neighbors backyard
Kids at Pickle work on a mural funded by KAB
Lots for the city to pick up!
Angela Bribesca and Tony Tamez keep Atkinson clean
Volunteers and neighbors and are team
Cleaning up St. John Ave.
Our favorite sight
 
 
 
                           Envisioning Change                       Empowering People                      Encouraging Cooperation
Neighborhood Clean-Ups
The local police talk about the “broken window” principle. If a window is broken in a house and not fixed, within a year, the roof will fall in. That’s how we think about getting and keeping our neighborhood clean. If you don’t keep things clean, the trash just snowballs.
 
In the last couple of years, with the help of Keep Austin Beautiful, St. John residents have taken charge of making their neighborhood a clean and safe place to live in. In fact, so much trash was removed in 2005 that we won the KAB citywide “litter abatement” award (we are also runner-up for the Austin “Community Involvement” award for 2006)! You can see pictures of what the mountains of trash were like. Today, those mountains are gone and we work on maintaining and improving. For example, neighbors got together last spring and completed three raised wooden vegetable beds for seniors at the rec center.
 
Sometimes we have volunteer groups who want to do clean-ups. They are always welcome, but we don’t let them go out on their own. The neighborhood belongs to the residents, and we always try to team them up. If we didn’t have a cookout already planned, neighbors have cooked tamale dinners for the volunteers and spent time talking about their neighborhood.
 
Special thanks go to Mr. Vincent Tovar, a teacher at Pickle Elementary, who mobilized his students 3 years ago to begin regularly cleaning Buttermilk Creek behind the school. Also, Keep Austin Beautiful has been incredible in supporting our clean-ups with anything we need. It’s all part of building community in a sustainable way.
Photo Albums
 
 
HopeFest
October 2006
 
Unity Walks
August, 2005
April 2006
 
 
Bible Club
June 2006
 
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