Englewood is lucky to have residents who pitch in to make the community a better place to live.
“Instead of going to play golf or doing yard work, about a dozen volunteers spent part of Sept. 10 helping make Englewood look better by picking up trash and painting over graffiti.
The graffiti paint-out program, organized by Tony Arnoldy, Englewood Police community affairs specialist, is held once a month in the warn-weather months. The Sept. 10 effort was strengthened by about half dozen volunteers from the Living Branch Fellowship Church.
Because of the number of volunteers, Arnoldy took about half the group to locate and paint over graffiti in the alley between Broadway and Lincoln Street.
The group with Arnoldy included Maria Talamantes and her two daughters, 11-year-old Cloe and 9-year-old Lily, who were joining the paint out for the first time.
“I saw the request for volunteers in the paper and decided it would be a good way to help our community,” Maria said. “I brought my daughters with me today because I think it is important to teach them about volunteering. I showed the girls graffiti in our city, we talked about it and they said they wanted to come with me.”
Lily said she was happy to come because she liked to paint. Her sister Cloe said she thought volunteering for the paint out was important.
“Graffiti doesn’t look good and it isn’t good for our city,” she said. “I think it is good that we can paint over it so our city looks better.”
Steve Fletcher said the group from Living Branch Fellowship Church was part of a group called Communities helping their Community.
“There is a larger group working today in Denver but we wanted to stay in Englewood to help our community,” Fletcher said. “I think it is a way for us to let the community know our church cares about Englewood and wants to help make it a better place for all who live here.”
The group walked the bike path, picking up trash and painting over graffiti along the banks of Big Dry Creek from the just west of Broadway to near Englewood High School,.
Miranda Fletcher, Stephen’s 15-year-old daughter, was one of the painters.
“I like to help my community,” she said as she prepared to paint out graffiti in one of the bike path tunnels. “I wish people wouldn’t litter or paint graffiti but, since they do, maybe we can clean up some of that so we have a nicer-looking city.”
Arnoldy said the addition of the Living Branch Fellowship volunteers is a plus for the program.
“This month we had six but last month, the Living Branch Fellowship volunteers were among about 125 people joining. They joined us last month as part of a project involving a volunteers from number of churches in the metro area. The volunteers were part of a community service program called Rock the Rockies that was held in conjunction with the Graham Crusade,” she said. “That group did an amazing job. They not only helped us paint out a lot of graffiti, they had teams helping residents who needed the assistance to cut down weeds and mow their lawns. It was a great program.”
She said she knows there are residents who need help with yard work and she is thinking about trying to organize a yard-work project as part of next year’s graffiti paint-out program.”
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