Community Day

I woke up and realized what day it was. I looked over at the clock and leaped out of bed. It was 6:00 which meant I had missed the bus and now had to walk to school. I threw on the first pair of clean clothes I could find and rushed out the door. As I walked down the street, I seen some of the things that never changed about this town. Trash bins overflowed and garbage littered the streets. Smog filled the air and there were sneakers hanging from the wire that connected the telephone poles. I looked over and saw a group of men hanging out by the jiffy store.

I got to school and Ms. Baker greeted me.

“Hey Baby, did you miss the bus this morning?”

“Yes, Ma’am I did”.

“Okay, you head straight to class now”.

She handed me a pass and I was on my way. Ms. Baker was the nicest lady in the front office. I was glad she was in charge of attendance. When I got to class, I handed my pass to Mrs. Smith and sat next to my best friend Monty.

I said, “Hey man, did you want to hang out after school today?”

“Yeah, we can walk home together and go to the courts to shoot some hoops”.

“That’s a great idea!”

Mrs. Smith started her lesson by talking about the importance of community. Then she told us that she wanted us to come up with a project that would help our community.

Monty said “Mrs. Smith where do we even start with fixing the community?”

“It’s not about fixing it Monty, but about improving our community. There are a lot of things you can do to help your community get better”.

I said “Like what Mrs. Smith?”

“That is for you all to figure out. Once everyone has a project idea we will vote. Whichever idea gets the most votes is what we will do as a class to help the community”.

I was actually excited about this assignment. I had several ideas on how to make the community better. Now, I just had to figure out the best one.

After school I walked to the courts with Monty. A couple of our other friends were already there so we decided to join their game.

Monty said “Hey Mike, can we join you?”

“Of course, get over here man!”

We played for a while and decided to go to the jiffy store. Mr. Kyle welcomed us in.

“Hey boys, it’s good to see you. How is school going?”

“It’s going good sir; we are actually planning a community project for class”.

“That is wonderful, I hope you choose wisely because we could use all the help we can get”.

“Yes sir, we will come up with something great”.

“I know you will, be safe getting home now”.

We walked back to my house and I saw that my mom’s car was in the driveway. I walked in the kitchen and she was cooking dinner. I walked over and gave her a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

“Hey mom, how was your day?”

“It was good sweety, how was school?”

“It was okay, we are going to be doing a community project for class”.

“That will be great, do you know what you are doing yet?”

“Not yet, but we will think of something”.

“That’s awesome, you guys have fun, dinner will be done soon”.

I walked upstairs and got my laptop. We had to figure out which community project we were going to pitch. We decided to brainstorm some ideas first.

I said “What if we do a community garden?”

Monty said “That sounds like a good idea, but what if we did a garbage clean up?”

Mike said “What if we start a tutoring service for the kids in the neighborhood?”

I said “These are all great ideas. It would be hard to choose just one”.

Monty said “What if we do all of them?”

I said “Yes! What if we do a community day and we can have different activities going on at the same time”.

Mike said “That would be awesome!”

My mom called us down for dinner. We told her about our idea for the community day and she thought it was a great idea.

She said “Maybe you guys could get the rest of the community involved as well. That way you guys have more help. I am sure there are a bunch of people that would love to help”.

The next day at school when it was time to give our ideas for the community project, Mrs. Smith wrote each of our ideas on the board. I was really hoping that our idea would be the one to be chosen. As we voted the ideas got narrowed down and we were down to the top 3. Then our idea got chosen and I was excited as I could be.

Mrs. Smith said “Okay everyone, we will be doing the community day as our class project. This is going to be a lot of work but this project will do a lot of good as well”.

She gave us the rest of class to work on planning the event. Monty, Mike, and I each headed up one of the main activities. I was in charge of the community garden. I got with my group and we started contacting local businesses to get donations for the garden. Meanwhile, Mike was contacting the high school to get volunteers for the tutoring service and Monty was getting volunteers for the garbage clean up. Other people in the class were making flyers and posting them on social media to spread the word. By the time class was over we had made a lot of progress but there was still quite a bit to do.

After school we decided to walk around town and spread the word some more. We posted a flyer at the jiffy store and Mr. Kyle was excited to hear about the event. He donated some water to pass out to the volunteers. We thanked him for the donation and moved on. We stopped at the church and the local café. Everyone seemed excited about the event. After we finished making our rounds we headed back to my house for dinner.

It was the day of the event and everything was going smoothly. All of the volunteers were in place and everyone seemed really happy. We kicked off the event by planting the first plant in the garden together. It represented the growth that our community would endure if we worked together. When the event was over there was no more garbage in the streets, the sneakers on the wire were gone, and the smog seemed to be a little less thick. I knew that this wouldn’t last forever but for now things were better and we had come together for something that truly mattered.