KPEP is providing assistance to Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety (KDPS) and the Northside Association for Community Development (NACD) in their efforts to construct the NACD Literacy Park as well as improve roadside conditions along the streets of Ada and Woodbury. I was able to attend these awesome events to cover it via social media and snap some pictures of the work being done.
These efforts came as part of KPEP’s 2014 Earth Day volunteer work. KPEP (the Kalamazoo Probation Enhancement Program), operates as a community-based alternative to incarceration and provides programs for residential as well as non-residential individuals. These programs give men and women the opportunity to take personal responsibility in their lives and give back to the community around them.
Ground was broken on NACD’s “Literacy for Life” park construction project in Kalamazoo on April 22 at around 8 a.m. with assistance and volunteer work from KPEP resuming on May 31. The goal of the park, appropriately named “Literacy Park,” is to provide a year-round venue where people of all ages can garden and read and where children can come to play and learn in a fun, creative way.
Volunteers from KPEP helped with tree planting, ground clearing and organizing supplies which had been gathered for the construction of Literacy Park. I was able to visit with Mattie Jordan-Woods, NACD’s executive director, who was particularly grateful for KPEP’s support. “They’ve really helped us, especially with sorting out all the organizational things we’ve gotten together over the years,” Jordan-Woods said.
The NACD is a non-profit organization, established in 1981 by neighborhood residents to address social and physical problems facing Kalamazoo’s Northside neighborhood. This organization serves as the only one of its kind north of the city of Kalamazoo and is dedicated to improving the neighborhood in which it was founded. Mattie and her team are building Literacy Park in order to help bring educational tools to those in the community who have not had access to them on their own. I could see after only a couple hours of being there that for the size of this organization, they were completing monumental tasks in fantastic ways. An organization composed of only a handful of individuals was building a park which would positively affect the lives of countless others.
At around 2 p.m. KPEP moved on to its street cleanup project which also aimed to improve the conditions of the Northside neighborhood, specifically the streets of Ada and Woodbury. KPEP volunteers as well as KDPS officers strategically moved alongside these streets picking up trash and debris from the curbsides and lawns. This seemingly small act makes an enormous impact on improving the conditions and cleanliness of the Northside neighborhood. The result was definitely a drastic improvement. It wasn’t long before the lawns were once again green and free of clutter. I was surprised with their efficiency!
The volunteers at KPEP are truly learning the importance of community service and my time spent with them proved they are finding unique, beneficial and fun ways to make the Northside neighborhood a much more positive environment for all those who live there!
