This weekend’s citywide cleanup will be unlike any that Angels Anonymous has coordinated in recent years.
Because of the novel coronavirus, the local nonprofit is hosting a virtual cleanup this Saturday, Sept. 26, where Fall River residents are encouraged to clean up litter and trash in their own neighborhoods and to share pictures of them doing so with Angels Anonymous for social media purposes.
“We were forced to be a little more creative with how we could still try to show some love to the city and clean up some areas that could use it,” said Melissa Dawson, the president, and executive director of Angels Anonymous.
Speaking this week outside the nonprofit’s office at 231 Weaver St., Dawson said the pandemic has complicated Angel Anonymous’ charitable works, which include a monthly food pantry, community restoration projects and charitable drives, among other initiatives.
“Because this year was a little different, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and there are a lot of restrictions around social gatherings, we had to postpone a lot of our cleanups throughout the summer,” Dawson said.
On Saturday, city residents who are interested in participating in the virtual cleanup can pick up trash around their homes, city blocks and neighborhoods, as well as nearby public parks, green spaces and public areas such as playgrounds.
“We’re just asking folks to take a walk around your neighborhood, pick up trash while you’re walking around your neighborhood, clean up in front of your house, if you live within walking distance to a local park or some area you know could use some TLC,” Dawson said.
Residents are asked to not only take pictures of themselves picking up garbage, but to also bag the litter and include it in their regular trash. If larger amounts of trash are collected, Dawson said Angels Anonymous can arrange for it to be picked up.
“We have a roller-skating group that’s actually going to be taking on some of the skate parks around the city,” said Dawson, who added that other groups have indicated they will be cleaning up areas of the city together.
Dawson said the virtual cleanup project has the potential to cover the whole city.
“People know their neighborhoods better than everybody,” Dawson said. “I’m hoping this will help us target more areas than we would have been able to do had we just done a few cleanups in one isolated area.”
In normal times, Angels Anonymous organizes several in-person citywide cleanups throughout the year. For now, the pandemic and social distancing requirements have put a stop to those, and has complicated the non-profit’s food pantry service.
“Our pantry used to be a walk-through pantry where people could come right into our building and grab what they needed to. But because of COVID we are now completely outdoors and drive-thru for our pantry,” said Dawson, who added that Angels Anonymous has been holding its food pantry outdoors since April.
“That’s a huge undertaking that requires us to pre-bag everything, pre-box everything, coordinate our deliveries so that produce doesn’t go bad before deliveries,” Dawson said. ”We’re making it work. We’ve had a lot of support from the community in making it work.”
With unemployment higher because of COVID-19 and with enhanced unemployment benefits having expired, Angels Anonymous has seen more of a local demand for its food pantry.
“We’ve been seeing people we’ve never seen before at the pantries,” said Dawson, who added that trash and litter also continue to be a persistent problem in Fall River.
“It seems like there’s always an abundance of trash in the city whether there’s a pandemic happening or not. I feel this is a problem for our city in a lot of neighborhoods,” said Dawson, who hopes this weekend’s cleanup will encourage more city residents to take pride in their neighborhoods.
For more information on the virtual citywide cleanup, email Angels Anonymous via angelsanonymousfr@gmail.com, or visit the group’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AngelsAnonymousFR.
Comments are closed.