Volunteerism Way Up in Fall 2017

Since September, 375 volunteers have participated in 30 cleanups and have removed 680 bags of trash and 139 tires.  This is a large increase over the same period in 2016 when 253 volunteers removed 415 bags and 60 tires in 24 cleanups. Volunteers came from diverse groups and locations in the Triangle.  Cleanups were done by 19 of the 21 groups in our Adopt-A-Shoreline and Adopt-A-Feeder Stream Programs. Two new groups, The Planeteers and Crusaders Cleaning Crew ,did their first. Our Annual Fall event open to the general public attracted 90 volunteers.

We hosted five community service projects by organizations. Activate Good's Day of Remembrance on September 11 brought 50 middle school students from Franklin Academy in Wake Forest along with teachers.  This group tackled shoreline on the New Hope River channel that gets trash carried by the Haw River.

Department heads from Chatham County government chose us for their annual retreat spending their time together to do a cleanup and to get aboard a pontoon boat for an interpretative nature tour of the lake.

GlaxoSmithKline chose us for the eighth year of Orange Day, a corporate-wide activity to assist  local nonprofits. 

We challenged 50 rugged UNC ROTC cadets with removing trash from steeply sloping rocks (rip rap) that lead down to the lake on either side of the bridge over Beaver Creek.

Our partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which started with providing logistical support for our semi-annual cleanups, has grown. Now the Corps  assists us throughout the year as needed and the staff has joined our Adopt-A-Shoreline Program to care for a site near their headquarters. 

An energetic group of 12 Troop 951Boy Scouts came from the northern part of Chatham County with three adults. They cleared the last of trash along the innermost reach of a cove on Wilderness Island, at least until the next rains brings more!