Community Project

A Better Planet Community Project

Aanchal Singh

       The following is the report of experiences Paola and I had when we went to Warinanco park to complete our community project. Warinanco park is Elizabeth’s most extensive park, known as a county park designed by the noted landscape architect Fredrick Olmstead , who also designed New York’s  Central Park.  It’s truly a park for all seasons with winding trails, huge trees , flower gardens , ice skating rink, track, fitness course, tennis courts, football, soccer and baseball fields.  In the spring, Cherry Blossoms sprout and turn the park into a colorful place that must be seen.  The beautiful white trees mesmerized Paola and me.  The park also contains a waterway (lake), which contains lots of fishes and ducks.

           As our community project required, we went to the park to clean the park and mostly the lake.  It was a beautiful but a little cold Saturday morning, a very helpful and thoughtful Colombian family accompanied us in our effort to complete this project and do our share in saving the planet for our future generations.  Warinanco Park is a very huge park, as we were wandering around with the family we saw a lot of trash that was compiled on the banks of the lake (Shown in the pictures).  We started by picking up all the trash from the bank and putting it away, as we realized that all these water bottles, polythene, beer bottles and soda cans were taking away the beauty of the lake also by affecting the ducks and fishes that were residing in it.

          We also conducted a small interview with the family that was helping us in cleaning the lake.  As we were having the conversation with the family, they told us that they visit the park every Saturday and the park keeps getting more tarnished by the local teenagers and the daily visitors.  They also told us that they were afraid that this beautiful park and the lake would be so contaminated that our kids will not be able to enjoy it at all.   

          They were very impressed by the fact that we were at least trying to save the park.  There are many ways for the local community to clean the park or at least save it from getting worse.  Paola and I took a small step and tried to make a difference.   

As Paola has already mentioned in her report, we also created a Facebook page where we shared our pictures and experiences and requested our family and friends to join it as well.  

Following are the other pictures that we took while doing this community project:

The family that helped us clean the banks of the river and the tracks. The kids were very excited and cheerful as they were cleaning the lake with us.

Paola and I: