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Earth Day is just around the corner on April 22, and it’s a time to celebrate our home and pay more attention to how we treat it.
United Way of Kankakee and Iroquois Counties is hosting Day of Action in honor of Earth Day, where volunteers are sought for 15 local service projects.
Projects span across the seven wards of Kankakee and also include several other municipalities as well as schools. The committee is a joint venture between United Way, the City of Kankakee’s Economic and Community Development Agency, CSL Behring, Currents of Kankakee and Olivet Nazarene University.
On April 22, there will be clean-up projects at Jeffers Park in Kankakee for Kankakee Community College students, campus-wide clean-up projects for ONU students, and recycling and student engagement activities for students at the Lincoln Cultural Center.
Projects scheduled throughout the day include:
• 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. - Legion Park clean up in Watseka
• 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. - Community garden projects in Kankakee’s 6th Ward
• 10 a.m. to noon - Neighborhood street clean up in Kankakee’s 1st Ward
• 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. - Painting and playground restoration at Kankakee County Community Services Inc. and the Salvation Army
• Noon to 1 p.m. - Soldiers Creek beautification in Kankakee’s 5th Ward
• 2-3:30 p.m. - Planting and street clean up in Kankakee’s 7th Ward
• 3:30-5 p.m. - Grounds beautification at Limestone Township Library District
• 4-5 p.m. - City entrance cleanup in Kankakee’s 3rd Ward
• 4-5:30 p.m. - Kensington Park clean up in Kankakee’s 4th Ward
• 4-5:30 p.m. - Perry Farm Creek clean up in Bradley
For those unable to make any of those times work, there is an option to donate at myunitedway.org/dayofaction.
Since it’s a Tuesday and I’ll be working during all of those times, I’ve decided to do an extended version of Day of Action by purchasing a grabber tool that allows me to pick up trash and debris while I’m out on walks. It’s a small dent in a gigantic task, but I figure it’s better than nothing.
If you can’t make Day of Action and don’t want to go the grabber tool route, I still encourage you to ask yourself what you can do to make our planet a little bit cleaner. If we put it a bit more front-of-mind, those small dents can snowball into bigger change.