Can’d Aid clean-up for a cause

Volunteers will take over Longmont’s Clark Centennial Park

Longmont residents can help spruce up one of the city’s largest parks — Clark Centennial Park, 1100 Lashley St. — during a trash clean-up event next weekend.

Boulder County nonprofit Can’d Aid leads the clean-up. Volunteers can attend any part of the cleanup, which will run from noon to 2 p.m. next Saturday.

“It’s just a good way to encourage people to spend a little bit of time outside cleaning up their community and making it a safer, more enjoyable place for our families and kids to play,” said Abbi Arneson, program and community engagement manager for Can’d Aid.

This is Can’d Aid’s fifth year organizing a river or park cleanup in honor of Earth Day. It’s also the third year that the group has partnered with local nonprofit Sustainable Resilient Longmont to host the event.

“SRL has been so great to work with,” Arneson said. “On our end, it introduces us to more volunteers and more people. And on their end, it provides a handson volunteer experience for people to actually feel like they’re making a difference in their neighborhood.”

Volunteers will receive trash bags and gloves, but they are welcome to bring their own supplies, too. Arneson said the event will focus on collecting all kinds of debris, but volunteers are encouraged to pay special attention to microtrash like cigarette butts and bottle caps.

“The smaller things add up in a big way and end up in our water system,” Arneson said.

Can’d Aid has previously held clean-ups along the St. Vrain Creek and, like this year, Clark Centennial Park. Last year’s clean-up at the park came with cold weather and sleet, but Arneson said plenty of volunteers still came out to pick up trash in their raincoats.

Arneson said Clark Centennial Park always needs attention from volunteers due to how heavily it’s used by the public, especially from students at Timberline PK-8 nearby.

“Not only is it right by a school, but a large portion of that neighborhood in Longmont is bilingual,” she said. “So (this event) kind of loops in different cultures and families to encourage them to volunteer and give back. It also provides a little bit of pride in their school, in their neighborhood.”

Can’d Aid volunteers will also pick up trash along the South Platte River at Denver’s Confluence Park next Sunday, which Arneson said tends to be the nonprofit’s biggest clean-up event of the year. Anyone interested in attending that event can get more information about it at the Longmont clean-up.

Arneson said that dedicating time to an event like this not only impacts the local environment, but also fosters a love of giving back to community causes.

“While picking up trash for a couple of hours is super important … it also does so much for the individual,” she said. “Volunteering really does create a domino effect of doing good and feeling good.”