EnviroCorps Keeping the Community Clean

Saturday morning Vernon Young, who is 72, stopped by our house in unincorporated Pierce County, to tell us about an organization he founded called EnviroCorps. Vernon started out by picking up litter along a route my husband and I used to pick up back when we first moved to the neighborhood in 1990 and before I went to work. We may have seen Vernon out and about all those years ago.

Vernon told me that he knows he won’t always be able to keep our little corner of the world picked up and that is why he formed EnviroCorps. It will be his legacy to the community when he can no longer keep us looking spiffy. But we are all a part of the community and EnviroCorps needs help in the form of donations and volunteers.

It only takes 15 businesses or individuals who are willing to donate $10 or more on a regular monthly basis to keep a two-mile section of road free of litter. EnviroCorps coordinates the actual litter pick up while Pierce County and the City of Gig Harbor donate collection bags and deal with disposal of them.

Making an on-going donation during our current economic situation may not sound like an option to individuals, but there are volunteer opportunities are available and the way our family is going to go. EnviroCorps supplies safety gear and littler pick-up tools as well as supervision of volunteers and temporary employees while they pick up litter.

EnviroCorps has no paid administrative staff, aggressively seeks grants and have partnered with LaborWorks, a west coast based temporary labor provider which has agreed to provide temporary labor at their cost to help maintain litter free communities.

EnviroCorps will gladly help coordinate volunteer opportunities for students, scouts, church groups and others looking to fulfill a public service requirement or to make a difference in the community.

You can register on-line to become a volunteer or pledge recurring on-line donations.
Visit the website at http://www.envirocorps.org/ or call Vernon at 253-265-6162

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW

Let me take you through a brief review of what I thought I needed in different phases of my life. I offer this to you to stimulate your own thinking about what you need today to support you in serenely and joyfully living each moment of every day.

As a child I needed
1. to be held lovingly and kept safe by the adults in my life
2. to tear things apart and put them back together
3. to win in the games I played with my friends

As a teenager I needed
1. to get through every class without failing
2. to spend time with my buddies
3. to hold the hand of the girl with whom I had fallen in love

As a young adult I needed
1. to find a way I liked to provide food, shelter, and affirmation in the world
for myself
2. to find someone whom I love and who would love me
3. to find a reason for living

As a middle age adult I needed
1. to spend time with people who would support me in sharing my gifts and myself
2. to learn how to let go of my fear, guilt, anger, frustrations, resentments, and failures
3. to accept my limits, my aging, my dying

I now think that this is what I need now:
1. to listen to, understand, and accept each person who comes into my life
2. to support other people in leading meaningful and healthy lives
3. to accept that I and all I care about will, soon, no longer be alive

In my work as a hospital chaplain I have come to admire deeply family members and friends who support their loved ones who are sick or dying. I have found that without my family and friends I doubt that I could face serious illnesses or my own death.

This afternoon I stopped by one of the waiting rooms where family members and friends wait for their loved ones who are, for a few hours, being treated for some sickness. I focused in on a few items in the waiting room that had been provided to help friends and family get through those hours. Here are some of them:




Small tokens that welcomed them















Refreshing drinks













Tasty tidbits




Just a few simple things set aside by caring volunteers people to support families and friends who were waiting to see their loved ones after their treatments had been completed...
Isn't what we really need is to love and be loved...