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About 1,300 registered volunteers, and perhaps twice that overall, spend a day improving their communities.
By JOY DAVIS-PLATT
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 10, 2001
All over Hernando County, volunteers pitched in to help clean up litter on Saturday in an effort organized by Operation PRIDE.
Group president Rose Rocco spent Saturday morning driving through the county checking on cleanup sites.
"We drove from one end of the county to the other, and there were people working together like I've never seen," she said. "It was a real community at work."
In all, the group registered about 1,300 people for the cleanup and the party held afterword at Weeki Wachee Springs. But Rocco said she estimates that twice that number pitched in on the cleanup.
The idea for the project came from the Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving unit at the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, Rocco said.
"I've always felt that when you do things on a small level, they don't generally do well," she said. "So we decided to make this a community effort that stretches across the entire county."
She tried to involve county government, real estate agents, builders and community groups in the effort, she said.
Cleanup locations included Pioneer Park, Hernando Beach, River Country Estates and Spring Hill Drive.
The Hernando County Commission gave the project a $500 sponsorship and use of the county landfills, Rocco said.
"It just took off from there," she said.
Lisa Whitman is the leader of a Spring Hill Junior Girl Scouts group that cleaned Delta Woods Park on Saturday.
"What better way to service their community than to clean it?" Whitman said.
The 19 girls, who are in the third through fifth grade, worked toward their Sign of the Sun badge, but Whitman said they got more than just a decoration for their uniforms.
"The next time they have a Popsicle stick, they will definitely walk to a trash can," she said.
The group filled the back of a pickup with full green trash bags in the park and nearby Philatelic Drive.
"It seems like everybody in Hernando County smokes cigarettes and throws the butts on the ground," Whitman said with a laugh.
The purpose of the countywide cleanup effort, Rocco said, is not just to make the streets more beautiful, but to promote a strong community spirit within neighborhoods.
Rocco started the nonprofit Operation PRIDE (principle, recycle, involvement, development and environment) earlier this year. Come next year, Rocco said she wants to see the event, and the organization, grow.
"The response this year was phenomenal," she said. "It's a foundation we're building on for a much stronger community."