Monday, April 14, 2008

Community Turns Out to Fight Graffiti

I wanted to share my experience with Jerry Jardin's anti-graffiti group this past Saturday.

About 100 community-minded people showed up at 8:00am at the skateboarding rink at Kaneohe District Park. It was a diverse group made up of high schoolers, retirees and just interested citizens who just wanted to help out. Jerry did an amazing job of organizing. By 8:15am the group had been divided up into teams and each team given their assignments for the morning covering most of Kaneohe.

My group consisted of volunteers from Castle High Key Club and InterAct Club along with several interested citizens who just heard about the clean up from the media. They were: Kristina Lo, Allison Hirata, Sandra Huang, Gary Tamimura and his daughter Chelsea. Jerry Jardin and an HPD escort also accompanied our group.

Our assignment was to take out the graffiti on the bus stops along makai side of Kamehameha Highway. Another group covered the mauka side of the street. As we painted out the graffiti that we found at each bus stop, we saw other teams painting out graffiti on walls of buildings and other places around Kaneohe. It was truly an inspiring sight to see so many community-minded people volunteering their time to clean up their community.

I am proud to live in Kaneohe where the feeling of community pride is so strong.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

(email that was received by Roy Yanagihara)
Aloha, Just had a call from a Kaneohe resident who was expressing hisappreciation for the effort done to clean the wall. I thanked him forthe call and said I would pass the thanks along. He said he was sosurprised that the effort was made, I said the Board believes that itsfor all our community and we all have to do the best we can. No need to respond but (with caller ID) it was: Robert Anders 235-6294 Elwin SprayNeighborhood Commission Office(808) 768-3782