Keep El Paso Beautiful Holds Gift to the River Clean-Up

Keep El Paso Beautiful held its annual Gift to the River (GTR) Clean-up on Saturday, November 14, 2009. It is one of the four citywide annual clean-ups sponsored by Keep El Paso Beautiful in partnership with Environmental Services, the El Paso Street Department, the El Paso Fire Department and local volunteers.

The focus of GTR is to raise awareness and educate local high school and middle school students regarding the importance of having a clean community and its direct impact on everyone's quality of life.

According to Katherine Palafox, Director of Keep El Paso Beautiful, more than 425 students and community volunteers participated cleaning up El Paso this year. "The majority of the volunteers that participate in the GTR clean-up are are high school and middle school students," reported Palafox. "All tools and trash bags used in the clean-up were checked out from the KEFB Community Tools Sheds located at Fire Stations throughout El Paso."

Participating schools were: Franklin High School, Lincoln Middle School, Chapin High School, Radford and East Point Elementary. Additional volunteers were from the Stiles Garden Neighborhood Association and the Police Explorers.

Keep El Paso Beautiful's next citywide clean-up will be Gift to the Mountain in February 2010.

For additional information, call the KEPB office at 915-546-6742.

Pictured above: Mawby the dog, Nehaa Sohail, Jonie Fashing, Sarina Davidson, Treestran Vera, Tamara Vera, Tania Vera, Alejandro Dragon, Dustin Thorstad, Xavier Cooper and Julia Gilbert, Assistant Principal, Radford School