For immediate release: Jan. 9, 2020
Contact: Rachel Gordon, 415-554-6045
Community Clean Team Kicks Off Milestone 20th Anniversary Season on Saturday
Volunteers Join Mayor Breed and Supervisor Peskin to Beautify District 3 Neighborhoods
San Francisco, CA – Community Clean Team, which this year marks two decades of keeping San Francisco’s diverse neighborhoods clean and green through a spirited partnership involving volunteers and City work crews, kicks off the 2020 season this Saturday, Jan. 11, in Chinatown.
Mayor London Breed, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, hundreds of volunteers and City cleaning, landscape and tree crews will be on hand to celebrate the milestone 20th anniversary with a morning of festivities and neighborhood improvement projects. Special lion and dragon dances will get the day started at Portsmouth Square before volunteers set off to plant trees, weed medians, paint out graffiti, spruce up street furniture and pick up litter to help keep Chinatown, North Beach, Lower Polk and other District 3 neighborhoods looking good.
Community Clean Team is San Francisco Public Works’ largest and longest-running volunteer neighborhood beautification program. Since it began in 2000, volunteers have logged more than 200,000 hours, painted out some 4 million square feet of graffiti, collected more than 5,000 bags of litter and added more than 3,500 plants and 1,000 trees to the City’s public spaces.
“We all have a responsibility to keep our city clean. Over the past two decades, Community Clean Team has brought together thousands of volunteers – residents young and old, merchants, school groups, religious organizations and nonprofits – who find value in spending a few hours on a Saturday morning giving back to San Francisco,” said Mayor Breed. “The Community Clean Team is all about building community, taking ownership and flexing our civic pride, while also keeping our city clean and beautiful.”
• What: Kickoff of Community Clean Team’s 20th season; lion dance, work projects
• Date: Saturday, Jan. 11, 2020
• Time: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. (registration at 8:30 a.m., program at 9 a.m.)
• Kickoff location: Portsmouth Square, 733 Kearny St.
• Who: Mayor Breed, Supervisor Peskin, community volunteers, City crews
What: Kickoff of Community Clean Team’s 20th season; lion dance, work projects
When: Saturday, Jan. 11, 2020
Time: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. (registration at 8:30 a.m., program at 9 a.m.)
Kickoff location: Portsmouth Square, 733 Kearny St.
Who: Mayor Breed, Supervisor Peskin, community volunteers, City crews
“We take tremendous pride in working with our community partners to make our neighborhoods even better,” said Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, who has been with Community Clean Team from the start. “More street trees, cleaner sidewalks, less graffiti, more beautiful medians: We can see the immediate results of what can be accomplished with volunteers. There also is a profound camaraderie and joy that people experience when working together for the common good.”
Saturday’s workday is the first of 11 Community Clean Team events for the 2020 season. Each month, volunteers and City workers focus their sweat equity on a different supervisorial district. The success of the program relies on volunteers, corporate sponsors and the partnership of City departments, including the Recreation and Park Department, SF Environment and the Port of San Francisco.
District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin said he is excited that Community Clean Team is kicking off its 20th season in the historic Chinatown neighborhood, which he represents.
“District 3 is the heart of our tourism economy, but it’s also home to some of the densest, most vibrant residential neighborhoods in the City, including the nation’s most intact Chinatown,” said Supervisor Peskin. “We are committed to clean streets that serve everyone from tourists to residents, from the merchants lining our sidewalks to seniors strolling our alleyways. Mobilizing the community for a day of stewardship is the perfect way to kick off 2020 and the Lunar New Year.”
This year, Public Works aims to make the Community Clean Team experience more exciting for volunteers. Participants will receive a distinctive 20th anniversary t-shirt that reflects that month’s district. In addition, every event will start with great music or performances to get people energized before they get to work. Public Works also is teaming up with neighborhood restaurants to provide a tasty, communal lunch at the end of the volunteer shifts.
Now under Public Works’ “Love Our City” umbrella, Community Clean Team is key to advancing the idea that it takes all of us – not just City workers – to keep San Francisco clean and beautiful. To that end, Public Works has partnered with the hospitality industry, schools and corporations to participate in regular neighborhood cleanups; Public Works also runs the Graffiti Watch and Adopt-A-Street programs in which residents and merchants sign up to steward their neighborhoods. Public Works provides tools and support.
In addition, the department is actively engaged is raising public awareness around illegal dumping, initially focusing attention on five neighborhoods: Chinatown, the Mission, the Tenderloin, the Excelsior and Bayview. Each neighborhood has an illegal dumping “monster” designed pro bono by Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) students. The message? Illegal dumping is a monster of a problem, costing the City, and our partner, Recology, $10 million a year and blighting neighborhoods.
Chinatown’s monster, which will have its official unveiling Saturday, is “Boxzilla,” highlighting the problem that abandoned cardboard causes when dumped on sidewalks and in the alleyways. The goal of the public awareness campaign, sponsored, in part, by Recology, is not to scare people but to inform residents and businesses of ways to dispose of their unwanted materials properly.
More information can be found at www.sfpublicworks.org/loveourcity
About San Francisco Public Works: The 24/7 City agency cleans and resurfaces streets; plants and nurtures City-maintained street trees; designs, constructs and maintains City-owned facilities; inspects streets and sidewalks; builds curb ramps; eradicates graffiti; partners with neighborhoods; trains people for jobs; greens the right of way; and educates our communities.
Date
Type
