KCP Sunday Clean Ups help make Kutztown cleaner
KUBoK walks to improve safety in Kutztown
Kutztown Community Partnership Sunday Clean Ups occur year round, weather permitting, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays.
They start at the KCP offices on West Main Street. Clean Ups have been running for five years now, with volunteers from the local school district, community members, and a large number of students coming from Kutztown University. Last year we had more than 500 people come through over the course of the school year.
The Clean Ups are a great way for students from the University, community members, younger students from the Kutztown School District and others to get involved in a concrete and meaningful way to make Kutztown a Cleaner and Better Place to live, work and play.
The program was originally organized and run by a Kutztown University School of Social Work Graduate. He came up with concept during his placement as an intern at Kutztown Community Partnership, and he worked with community members, as well as getting input and resources from groups at the University, to make the program a reality.
Local businesses often donate materials to make the clean ups run such as trash bags and we have community businesses that have donated to help sponsor tee shirts promoting the event.
On Sunday, March 25, the day after Kutz Patty’s Day, students from Kappa Sigma Fraternity, Kutztown Area Middle and Elementary Schools, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Tau Delta Phi Fraternity, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, as well as a number of community members, came out to volunteer and clean up trash in Kutztown.
The Sunday Clean Ups are the best example of what Kutztown Community Partnership is all about. All the different groups in our community come together with a common goal to make Kutztown a better place to be, and each works side by side in a very real way to accomplish this goal.
Also, KUBoK, the neighborhood watch, is the community group that works out of KCP, are staffed by community members at large and University students. They are trained and they go out every Thursday, Friday and Saturday during the school year in the evenings to monitor areas downtown and keep things safe.
KuBok had students and community members were out walking during the event on Saturday, March 24. Kutztown University President Hawkinson, Dean of Students Donovan McCargo, Kutztown Community Partnership Community Liaison Sandy Green, and Mayor Jim Schlegel and others joined them to walk and work to keep the downtown and surrounding community safe.
All of those students were Kutztown University students, many of them walk KuBok on a regular basis and have done so for years. After being involved with KCP for more than five years, it is my distinct impression that the majority of Kutztown students are, as the shop owners I talked to on Saturday said, “respectful”, and that those involved in events like Kutz Patty’s Day are reckless and behaving inappropriately are in the minority.