The Garage Community Space in Terrace recently wrapped up it’s Downtown Cleanup Beautification Initiative for 2025 after running it for the past 6 months.
It’s a program that the Garage and the City of Terrace partnered up together on and the Garage’s Executive Director, Sharon Bandstra, explained how that partnership came about;
“We connected with staff from the City of Terrace and they made a map of a certain section, mainly the downtown core of Terrace. We had a contract with them to clean up the streets within this map. We started talking with the staff of the City in March and by the end of April, we had our crew together and we went to start the cleanup.”
Clean up days occurred twice a week, where the crew would meet up and then start picking up garbage for around a couple of hours and then put them in rolling bins that were provided by the City.
And while people could volunteer their services to the program, Bandstra mentioned how they had a more specific group of people in mind when recruiting was taking place;
“We hired people that have been through difficult situations or have had struggles, which made it hard for them to work. So we got together and we had a code of conduct that we all signed together about how we would act on the job and things we expected.”
Over the course of their cleaning efforts, they managed to fill up 108 total bags of garbage, disposed of over 60 needles and found some uncommon items like phones, clothing, coins and even a kitty litter box.
The program also got support from E360 Solutions, who gave them the garbage bags.
And while it isn’t a done deal at the moment, the Garage’s organizers are hoping to continue running this program next year as well.