FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — On Dec. 2 the Fayetteville City Council voted to renew a contract with Genesis Church that employees the unsheltered community to pick up litter at Fayetteville's trails, parks, and campsites.
The council, which donated $100,000 to the program in 2023, will do the same in 2024.
The "Pick Me Up" program, which celebrated its first full year in 2023, pays those in the unsheltered community to pick up trash in the area.
"We have found ourselves just by demographic of our neighborhood that we work a lot with the unsheltered community. And we do a lot of services for them" said Josh Park, Pick Me Up Coordinator for Genesis Church. "A lot of the litter that we saw on the trails was from the things that we hand out. And we don't want to be helping one part of the community while hurting another part of the community."
The program meets at 7Hills homeless shelter every Monday and draws five names for the week. Those five names then work from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and are given a meal and an opportunity to shower at Genesis Church after. They get paid $50 a day.
They launched the pilot program in 2022 and had its first full year in 2023. Over the course of the program, they've collected 200,000 pounds of trash. The $100,000 from the city goes to employing 2 supervisors as well as the 5 individuals who work a week.
"These are some of the most hardworking individuals that I've met. And it's just been such an honor to get to work with them. And to really watch that connection between people and the environment" said Heather Ellzey, an Environmental Educator for the City of Fayetteville.
With the program's success, in the spring they received a donation of $25,000 dollars from the Fayetteville Police Department to purchase a dump truck specifically for the program.
"[We] would drive back here to the transfer station and unload this, sometimes 1,200 to 1,500 pound loads. And now because of the chief in the Fayetteville police department, we have a dump truck so we can pull straight into the transfer station unload it" Ellzey said.
Park says the program has made him get to know so many people and create an outlet to give them hope for their future.
"The people who come out with us have the opportunity that day to go from being one of the problems that they hear about all the time, they're told constantly within our community, you are the problem. That day they become part of the solution," Park said. “The people of our community who have found themselves in an unsheltered situation, have an on ramp to hope have an on ramp to find a way to a new and different life."
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