Kattie Bond, Jimmy Gaines and Jody Prude

 Robert Montgomery and Sharlene Roberts

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:16 AM

Neighborhood Cleanup Brings Forth the Volunteers

Sojourner’s Truth Staff

The City of Toledo, Organized Neighbors Yielding Excellence (ONYX), Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) and the Economic Opportunity Planning Association (EOPA) brought together approximately 150 volunteers last Saturday, September 26 to help keep another significant portion of Toledo “clean and green.”

Last weekend’s clean-up took place on Woodland between Hoag and Hawley as the volunteers assisted their neighbors with a general clean-up.

The legion of volunteers trimmed sidewalk grass, bagged trash, scraped fronts of houses, swept, raked, brushed a two-block area during the three-hour clean-up.
 

According to Jimmy Gaines, executive director of ONYX, the clean-ups are scheduled on a twice-quarterly basis but this one was slightly different.

“We are taking all our programs from the different agencies, along with money from the Obama stimulus package and combining them and attacking the situation holistically,” said Gaines. So while one agency might have the funds to weatherize a house and another might have the funds to repair a roof, these groups are doing a bit of everything to all the houses in one neighborhood.

 “The reason we chose Woodland is that it is a tipping point residential area where people do a good job already of maintaining their properties so adding a little money goes a long way,” said Gaines.

The clean-up is just the first phase of the changes that will occur along that strip of Woodland. Soon, the agencies will move in again to repair all of the exteriors that are in need – roofs, windows, doors, porches – along with painting the exteriors.

 Page 4  http://www.thetruthtoledo.com/pdf/2009/093009pdf.pdf