By William Midkiff
Volunteers across Lincoln Parish made an environmental difference earlier last month by participating in the Parish Pickup, a sub-event of Love the Boot Week. This week is celebrated annually to aid in the beautification of Louisiana’s environment, primarily by removing litter.
Participants, armed with gloves and garbage bags, patrolled the streets and fields of our parish in groups, picking up trash and also, according to Tori Davis, marketing director at Experience Ruston, spreading a culture of cleanliness.
“The more people you see out with the bags, picking up trash, the more conscious it makes our community of not littering and picking up after themselves,” Davis said.
Davis, along with several other Experience Ruston employees, were deployed at 9 a.m. Saturday to clean up litter in the downtown area. Experience Ruston was actually partnered with the parish to help host the Parish Pickup. One other employee, Pam Strickel, felt a personal connection to the city and to the work done that morning.
“My husband and I recently moved back to Ruston because we love Ruston, and personally I noticed that we do have a lot of litter around here,” Strickel said. “It’s just a shame because our city spends so much time and energy in beautifying it, with the landscaping and outdoor areas, and to see it littered with trash is kind of disappointing. It’s just part of being in a community, loving it and wanting to improve it.”
Another large facet of the day’s cleanup and improvement efforts was Big Event, an annual event hosted by the Louisiana Tech University’s Student Government Association. For this massive project, the Louisiana Tech SGA enlisted the help of nearly 1,500 students to be grouped and sent around the city to provide community service wherever necessary.
Each group consisted of volunteers from various on-campus organizations and was led by a few members of SGA. These groups tackled a wide variety of issues around the city, such as landscape management, home renovation and even shelving books at the Lincoln Parish Library.
Caroline Anderson, SGA member and leader of Group 2 of Big Event, was impressed by and grateful for the sheer amount of help that was present Saturday.
“This is my first ever Big Event, so it’s been very exciting,” Anderson said. “It really means a lot to me to have such a big turnout and so many people that care about this all coming together for something that really matters.”
With over 50 volunteer groups working for two hours, SGA was able to reach a respectable portion of the Ruston area, providing nearly 3,000 hours of work for the beautification of our parish.
