PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Under a blistering sun in the scorching heat, Isis Rios stabbed the dry dirt with a shovel, loosening small rocks and tossing them into a bucket.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have everything organized in a certain way,\u201d she pointed out. \u201cWe have our compost going on, rocks for later usage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rios was one of a dozen teenagers sweating through a project to clear a 16-by-60-foot lot, just a block from Kensington and Allegheny avenues, where the opioid epidemic leads a host of challenges in their neighborhood, including the illegal dumping that blighted this small patch of ground. The work is hard, but Rios said she doesn\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re helping to make it be something better than just a place for weeds, trash and other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kids are part of Klean Kensington, which founder Jeremy Chen calls \u201cteen-led community development.\u201d The nonprofit won a $17,000 grant from a group of partners \u2014Thomas Jefferson University<\/a> (TJU), Circular Philadelphia<\/a>, Glitter<\/a> and the Trash Academy<\/a> \u2014 who hope to show that relatively cheap and easy improvements can turn a vacant lot into a community asset.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a perfect site for us,\u201d said Shari Hersh of Trash Academy. \u201cThis is probably one of the worst areas in the city for dumping. There\u2019s eight dump sites in a ten-block area. And so part of the project is something communities all over Philly know about, which is, if you reclaim a lot that is being dumped on and used for negative activities and transform it, it changes dumping in the neighborhood because it normalizes beauty, it shows care, it shows youth building change.\u201d<\/p>\n The work began in early spring, when the teens voted on what they wanted to put on the lot. Esperanza owns it but struggled to keep it clean, so it took some imagination, but they settled on a mini-forest for kids to play in and a pollinator garden for adults to enjoy.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our area, we don\u2019t have a lot of trees or pollinators, so just the thought of wildlife, like nature, it would be nice at a park,\u201d said Jeremy Vasquez.<\/p>\n He will be a park ambassador when the project is complete.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job will be, I\u2019m going to have to make sure it\u2019s nice and clean and neat for the little kids to come in, make sure it\u2019s safe for them,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n The ambassadors \u2014 there are three \u2014 are part of the vision for long-term change on the lot. They\u2019ll encourage the use of bins for trash. There will also be signs to discourage dumping. Trash Academy is holding dumping prevention education and workshops. Glitter will do weekly cleanups and measure litter levels before and after the lot remake.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we hope it\u2019s permanent, we don\u2019t have any assurances about how long it will be here, but at least temporarily we can show that this type of intervention works,\u201d said Kim Douglas, director of landscape architecture at TJU and creator of Park in a Truck.<\/p>\n Douglas added that parks not only improve the quality of life in a neighborhood but also health.<\/p>\n \u201cIt may be a very small drop in a very large problem, but we\u2019re hoping that it starts a conversation about these types of spaces and how critical they are to health.\u201d<\/p>\n For the kids, it\u2019s also about a sense of purpose.<\/p>\n They are making $19 per hour for their work, but said their main motivation was helping their community.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of hard work, but we\u2019re building a park for all the people,\u201d said Jaleb Gardana.<\/p>\n \u201cJust thinking about helping and working, as a teen, you feel you are mature,\u201d added Janey Alfred.<\/p>\n A few neighbors came out on their stoops and watched the buzzing activity on the lot. A resident named David found it a hopeful sign.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething coming to the neighborhood that was once a dump site that they\u2019re turning into something beautiful, especially in a neighborhood such as this, anything beautiful like that is good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Under a blistering sun in the scorching heat, Isis Rios stabbed the dry dirt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[97312,8921,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-223989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-community-garden","tag-kensington","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}