Volunteers clean and plant for community of tomorrow
April 22, 2021 at 9:09 a.m.
Port Chester Fire Department crews assisted in the clean up on Saturday, mounting trash bags on the front of Engine 63 and trucking them off to the DPW site. Firefighters pose for a photo with Port Chester Mayor Luis Marino during the project. Courtesy of Melissa Grieco
It wasn’t just adults and their obliging children who attended. Zoeya Suhail (left), Austin Lu and Victoria Babiuk, all Blind Brook High School freshmen, came out in support to make the butterfly garden at Rye Brook Village Hall a reality.
Rye Brook Department of Public Works General Foreman Paul Vinci (right) and Assistant General Foreman Joey Vasile wheelbarrow dirt out of the circle garden at Village Hall for a planting project.
Harrison resident Christina Yedowitz, who runs the Harrison based nonprofit Rebel Butterfly Gardener, plants flowers she donated to the Village of Rye Brook. Yedowitz assists the Village in exchanging flora on municipal land with more natural, pollinator friendly plants.
Selina Alvarado, 5, helps her family pick up trash outside the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library. Her family spent two hours cleaning the community, making a route from the Metro-North train station up along Westchester Avenue and back.
In celebration of Earth Week, 18 Port Chester volunteers walked the streets on Saturday, Apr. 17, to pick up trash off sidewalks and lawns during a town-wide Community Planting & Clean Up Day sponsored by commissions, nonprofits and committees in the Villages as well as the municipalities themselves. The Alvarado family participated this year for the first time after seeing a flyer on Instagram. “My son has to do some volunteer hours in order to graduate high school, so it’s another opportunity for him to come out and help the community,” said his mother, Ana.
