This Thursday night and Friday afternoon, the Olds Lions Club will be participating in -- and coordinating -- the first annual Local Initiative in Olds for Neat Surroundings (LIONS) Pick Up Garbage (PUG) event.
Theoretically, the date for this event is this Friday, May 13 from 1 to 4 p.m., but organizers realize not everyone is available to clean up garbage in the community that day, so they're also urging people to do their part Thursday evening, May 12, if that works better for them.
After the cleanup, a barbecue, sponsored by the Town of Olds, will be held in Centennial Park at 4:30 p.m.
Olds Lions Club member and organizing committee chair Henry Czarnota says hotdogs and drinks will be provided by the town. Lions Club members will be doing the barbecuing.
Czarnota says the barbecue is the club's and the town's way of giving back to those who participate in the cleanup.
“We want to celebrate this as a total community participation (event) highlighting that volunteerism can be done by everybody and that the whole community can get involved in something like this,” he says.
So far, more than 30 door prizes for participating children have been provided by local businesses.
Also, participating students from grades 1-12 will be eligible for a draw for an iPad.
In addition to the Lions Club, which came up with the idea, about 16 partners are involved, including about 1,400 students from all local elementary schools and Olds High School.
Other partners include the Town of Olds, CP Rail, the boy scouts, girl guides, Boys and Girls Club, Olds & District Chamber of Commerce, Communities in Bloom, Olds Legion, Church of the Nazarene and Olds College.
Czarnota says organizers have been working on the project for about two months.
He got the idea from a similar project undertaken each year in Coronation. He was a school principal there for 17 years. He's hopeful it will become an annual event here too.
“The whole community got together. The students would be involved,” Czarnota says. “We'd take the whole student population out and we would clean up the entire town of Coronation, which of course, is much smaller than Olds.”
Lions Club members will clean up the town along highways 27 and 2A as well as along the CP Rail right-of-way. CP employees will clean up the railway tracks/right-of-way itself. Students and other residents are asked to clean up residential areas, etc.
Czarnota says the town is buying bags for the project. Participants are asked to leave bags full of garbage near one of the parks or school grounds at flagged areas. A town truck will come by on the weekend or the following Monday to pick them all up.
Anyone wanting bags for the cleanup Thursday night can contact Czarnota by cellphone at 403-507-9628 or via email at [email protected].
Czarnota says on Friday, Lions Club members will be at Centennial Park -- a kind of command post for the event -- as early as 11 a.m. Participants can pick up bags for the project there from that time until about 1 p.m.
"We want to celebrate this as a total community participation (event) highlighting that volunteerism can be done by everybody and that the whole community can get involved in something like this."HENRY CZARNOTACHAIRPUG ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
