By Kelli Kirshtein, CCI Greenheart Local Coordinator
Kelli organized a Greenheart Project for her exchange students. They worked with the Maynard Litter League to clean up a municipal parking lot. Her group was comprised of herself, two exchange students, Noah from Germany and Oleksandr from Ukraine, and three host brothers, Michael, Ben, and Daniel. Noah and Oleksandr are both members of the Greenheart Club.
We met with the Maynard Litter League Coordinators who assigned us to a section of a large municipal parking lot; armed with plastic gloves, weeding supplies, and several “claws” useful for picking up litter, we went to work removing a plethora of cigarette butts, plastic bags, candy wrappers, cigar stubs, and other debris. The boys commented on yet another reason not to smoke, as the vast majority of the litter came from smokers and the results of their habit!
We also pulled out some ugly weeds, tidying up the edges of the lot, all the while discussing the differences between our three cultures–US, Germany, and Ukraine–in terms of civic engagement, environmentalism, and citizen participation in events such as the Litter League Cleanup. Host brothers Michael (12), Ben (12) and Daniel (7) learned a lot about how awesome teenage brothers can be, that working together makes the work light, and how satisfying it is to contribute to our community. Thank you, CCI Greenheart, for sponsoring our activity and supporting international brotherhood and environmental activism!