Volunteers make Hunts Point, Longwood shine
By Insanul Ahmed
insanulahmed@yahoo.com
Volunteers show off their handiwork in Lyons Gate Park.
Nearly 200 volunteers showed up at Lyons Gate Park in Longwood on April 21 to help paint, prune, and plant in the neglected park, and to spruce-up a run-down footbridge and a vacant lot.
When volunteers and members of City Year — the sponsors of “Rising Point 2007” — first walked into the park early that Saturday morning, the walls surrounding the basketball court were a faded, peeling gray, and the park’s sprinkler was just as shabby. By the end of the day, the walls were covered with fresh beige paint and a mural of the sea enlivened the sprinkler.
“It’s better than the regular stuff you see of drug dealers and hookers,” commented Dan White, 38, a Hunts Point native who attended the event with his 12-year-old son. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
Other residents echoed White. “As long as I’ve lived in Hunts Point I’ve never seen nothing like this,” proclaimed 36-year-old Jacqueline Vega. A single mother, Vega, was there with her three sons. “This gives kids something better to do than playing video games or getting in trouble,” she said.
City Year corps members, who volunteer to work for a small stipend in schools and neighborhoods around New York City, providing literacy tutoring, after-school programs, and other opportunities, were so pleased that they gave standing ovations to those who arrived in the park to work.
“It’s not just the impact by painting on walls, we’re impacting people’s mind,” declared Leila Bailey Stewart, 23, a City Year member who hails from the Bronx. “You need to be a part of the community to really show everyone you’re doing something, that’s what we do.”
The event was easy to find. Wearing their distinctive jackets, City Year members stood out like little red checkpoints, pointing people to the clean-up. Kids, many of whom came with their parents, flocked to volunteer, willing to give up their Saturday to help out.
In Lyons Gate Park, volunteers painted the walls and playground equipment in the park to give it a fresh look. They also planted trees and bushes.
Further down on Bryant Avenue–at a lot owned by New York Restoration Project, the organization founded by singer and actress Bette Midler to restore or develop parks, community gardens and open space in poor neighborhoods–workers were doing more landscaping.
Across the footbridge leading to the other side of the Bruckner, others where busy cleaning out loads of garbage from an area where chickens roamed. Here, too, they planted trees, in an area simply referred to as “Mr. Bailey’s Garden.”
“This is going to help get rid of all the rats and rodents in the buildings,” said a pleased Negron Cecili, 39, who lives across the street from the chicken coop.
Occasionally an ice cream truck would pass by, its driver hoping the scores of children would spot it, but the volunteers just kept working.
Bikers riding down the Bruckner kept taking their eyes off the road to see what was going on. Several motorists pulled over to ask what was happening inside Lyons Gate Park to draw such a big crowd.
“I even had the cops stop and ask me what was going on,” said 18-year-old Regina Andino, another volunteer.
“A lot of people say they did things in the community, but with us you can really see it,” noted Alex Bond, 18, a Hunts Point native and a City Year member.
It was easy to spot the volunteers. Paint and dirt covered their pants and shoes.
“I wanted to be the first one in my family to really do something,” exclaimed pintsized Ayesha Martinez,13, a Hunts Point resident who was holding a paint roller that seemed bigger than her arm and wearing a shirt twice her size that was covered in paint.
While Martinez and others painted the walls of the park, other volunteers were painting murals to be placed on the footbridge that takes people over the Bruckner to the other side of Bryant Avenue.
Many local residents fear the bridge, where the say junkies often loiter. One resident even spoke of a time she saw a 13-year-old boy shooting up there.
“The footbridge is the only safe way to cross the street because of all the cars, but the place is still dangerous,” said Caitlin Barrett, a 23-year-old City Year member.
City Year hopes that if the bridge is attractive, more people will use it, and it will be less likely to serve as a refuge for drug users. The murals are designed to help reclaim the bridge from the vandals who have covered it with graffiti, much of it offensive.
“We’re actually making murals with graffiti already on them,” commented Stewart. “We’re trying to show graffiti as an art, not as a form of defamation.”
Many City Year members labeled the day a success as much because of the turnout as its immediate physical effect on the area. Both they and many spectators said they were most impressed by the number of children who flocked to the event.
“I’ve helped kids, but I’ve have never worked with kids,” marveled Lea Cali, 20, a student at NYU.
People offered many reasons for choosing to volunteer. Eleven-year-old Sergio Lopez’s was simple.
“This makes it a better place to live.”