(Radio Iowa) – A three-month project to clean up Iowa’s waterways, roadways and neighborhoods will launch this week, and more helpers are needed. Andy Frantz, executive director of Keep Iowa Beautiful, says the annual “Pick-Up Iowa” program aims to recruit 25-hundred volunteers statewide to aid in picking up litter and sprucing up our state.
“We are absolutely looking for volunteers and groups to come out and help pick up their communities,” Frantz says. “Our actual program runs from April 1st to the end of June, but we go year-round in trying to beautify the state of Iowa.” People can register as individuals at the website Keep Iowa Beautiful-dot-org, but he says groups large and small are gaining in popularity every year.
“Any group that you have,” Frantz says, “and you can think of schools, clubs, the scouts, sports teams, neighborhoods, families, whatever group you want to have that has pride in their community and wants to create pride, create leadership, volunteerism, promote all of those sorts of things that make their community a better place to live and work.”
Most of us have seen the blue signs on Iowa highways, indicating which group is picking up trash in that area, but Frantz says this effort isn’t just limited to rural roads. “We’ve seen from city parks, streets, the highways certainly, streams, forests, anything,” Frantz says. “It’s really community-specific based on the need. That’s what we promote, figure out where the biggest need is in your specific community and just organize and start to build that civic pride and tackle whatever you can.”
There’s a host of information at https://keepiowabeautiful.org/ including checklists to help plan and promote your Pick-Up Iowa event. The word Iowa has roots in the language of the Dakota Sioux tribe, which translates as “beautiful land.”
