A Clean Sweep
Over 300 HSU students embarked on the NorthPark and College Heights neighborhoods on Saturday August 22nd. The students were involved with New Student Orientation at the University and participated in the 5th annual neighborhood clean up.
For the fifth year in a row HSU students were involved in helping beautify the NorthPark and College Heights neighborhoods through a partnership with the Friendship Houses. Students worked to help neighbors in each neighborhood to haul off trash to two dumpsites located in the neighbor
hood which were set up by the City of Abilene. Students were split up in teams of 8-10 students and were assigned various locations to go help neighbors. Some students worked with the neighborhood churches, University Baptist and NorthPark Baptist to help them haul off and clean up around their buildings, and some students helped the City with cleanup in alley ways in the college heights neighborhood and nearby, and other students were sent directly to neighbors homes where they helped with yard work, painting, picking up trash and hauling truck loads of brush and leaves, tires and other debris to the dumpsites. Students and neighbors alike enjoyed the day and getting to work together and know one another.
At the Vasquez family home where students were helping them paint, the family prepared for the students coming this week by getting some scraping and priming done and then buying paint for the students. The group was enjoying their time with the family so much they stayed 2 hours past the work time to finish painting Mr. and Mrs. Vasquez house. In return the Vasquez family ordered the group pizza and brought them drinks because the group missed their lunch break because they were so set on working.
Other groups would finish a job and come back to the friendship house and ask where they could go next to help, several neighbors called or walked over and asked for help and students were available to go over and work with them. It was great to see the HSU students and neighbors working together to help make our neighborhoods cleaner and safer. Through the neighborhood clean up our neighborhood is not just a cleaner place but our new students now living in the neighborhood on the HSU campus now feel more a part of the neighborhood.