Students join Texarkana anti-litter campaign
TEXARKANA — Initiatives and projects are beginning to stem from participants in the Texarkana Regional Chamber of Commerce anti-litter campaign meetings, as they strive toward a cleaner Texarkana.
The chamber and various stakeholders in the Texarkana community met Thursday morning for the campaign’s fourth gathering. Members outlined how they are taking the group’s message to the next level.
Theresa Cowling, principal at Arkansas Middle School, said the Texarkana School District and the Early College Academy have been partnering with Texarkana to adopt part of Jefferson Avenue. She said plans to send the city’s logo and the anti-litter group’s “go TXK Clean and Green” logo to her marketing staff to come up with a campaign partnership to promote the message.
“The cool thing about our project is that our students have to go through an interview process to be part of our Early College Academy, and they have to complete ‘X’ number of community service hours,” Cowling said. “We just met with them, and one of the things that kept coming out is ‘we’re not taking care of our city.’ Now, these are middle schoolers.
“One of the boys said, ‘Every morning, I see this little lady cleaning up on her own on Jefferson. What if we helped her and took the rest of our end of Jefferson on?” So, I said let’s start talking with the city.”
Cowling then started talking with Tyler Richards, director of public works on the Arkansas side, about marketing this partnership.
“We’re just really excited that the kids are seeing what the adults are seeing, and they’re coming together,” she said. “It was part of their plan to do this, and it makes me feel good about where we are.”
Chamber Board Chairperson Jennifer Harland said this was great to see and that this could possibly be a blueprint that other schools or districts follow.
Per usual, the meeting split up into groups — education, business, outreach and city officials — to collaborate on how they could best use their resources to relay the message and make change.
The business and outreach groups combined to discuss making a document with a common theme and the group logo on it to send out to six businesses. Topics like funding sources and common language were brought up to best spread the word among Texarkana institutions.
The group of city officials discussed a potential community clean-up effort and how to coordinate the location, time and plan for it. They also talked about yard signs, potential donations and the possibility of sending a letter to state representatives about the initiative.
The education group stressed the importance of educating students and teachers on the anti-litter group’s mission, as well as creating a call to action to get people involved.
The group will reconvene on Aug. 26 at a location that has not yet been determined.