By JALEN WADE
Hundreds of volunteers worked side by side with city officials all over College Park on Saturday to rake leaves, pick up trash, paint a sewer drain, plant trees and otherwise spruce up their neighborhoods.
The volunteers came out for the 13th annual Good Neighbor Day, sponsored by the City of College Park, the University of Maryland (UMD) and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC).
“We’re here helping out, grabbing some weeds, playing in some trees, getting real, in touch with nature,” volunteer Kaelan Wilfred, who lives in Bethesda, said as he helped clean up the area around Lake Artemesia. “It’s a beautiful lake now. Getting in a nice workout as well. It’s great.”
Good Neighbor Day started in 2011 as a part of a Christmas in April event, hosted by a nonprofit that helps fix the houses of aging local residents.
Josanne Francis, UMD’s lead community engagement program coordinator, said community members nominated each project for review by the event’s organizers.
Projects were designed to enhance community space and be educational and doable within 3.5 hours, according to event organizers.
“With Good Neighbor Day, we are ensuring that we are catering to the needs of the City of College Park and
environment,” Francis said. “Things that otherwise would not have been completed, certain projects that we are able to help get them complete and supported in whatever way we can, with expertise and materials and with the labor.”
The projects included a permaculture garden installation, the removal of invasive plant species from multiple locations, yard work and flower planting,
At the College Park Aviation Museum, volunteers transcribed audio from 20 years’ worth of oral history about the Lakeland neighborhood.
Trevor Muñoz, director of UMD’s Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, called the event a “transcribe-athon” and noted it is part of an ongoing effort to preserve the history of the historically Black Lakeland neighborhood, which was heavily affected by urban renewal in the 1970s and ’80s.
“I feel a lot of people forget that segregation was not that long ago,” Xiomara Bradden, a junior government and politics major at UMD, said. “Our grandparents lived through segregation and so preserving the history of African Americans, especially in this community who broke barriers, is extremely important.”
Farther north in the Hollywood community, Councilmember Jacob Hernandez (District 1) helped paint the concrete on top of a sewer drain to bolster awareness that only water–not garbage–should go down the drain.
Five-year-old Noelle Showalter, who lives in Hollywood, helped paint the drain, and in fact, inspired the project when she told Hernadez, during a 2023 campaign stop, that she wanted to see more rainbows in College Park.
Hernandez honored her request by helping to paint a red, white and blue rainbow on the drainage top,
Showalter’s mother, Kirstin, said it was “exciting” to see the area become more community focused.
The group also painted a mini free food pantry and a tiny, freestanding library.
Hernandez said one of the things he hopes volunteers take away is that Good Neighbor Day doesn’t need to be just one day a year.
“This is a great event on a yearly basis because it’s organized and facilitated by folks who have done it multiple times a year, but you know nothing’s stopping you from coming together with your friends, with your neighbors, with the city, to be a part of some of these projects,” Hernandez said.
A few blocks away, City Councilmember Alan Hew (District 1) assisted with the installation of a permaculture garden in the Davis Field Playground. Permaculture is a form of gardening that uses multiple fields of science, including agronomy, entomology, botany and meteorology, to produce a self-sustaining garden.
Hew said the project showed residents what to plant in their yards and which plants are edible, like elderberries, currants and apples.
Caleb Dotson, an Oxon Hill High School junior, said he hopes the project will teach people how they can come together as a community to help the environment.
“Clearly, there’s not a lot of knowledge about things like this, and I think that if more people knew about things like this, we would have a much more developed garden in all types of communities around the country,” Dotson said.
At Lake Artemisia,a group pulled out invasive weeds near the water.
The group’s members are part of the Southern Management Leadership Program (SMLP), a three-year scholarship program for students from Prince George’s Community College and Montgomery College.
Brandon Scott, a member of the program, said he was glad to volunteer, as it gave him a chance to bond with others in his program.
“I like serving the community, I like being a part of, you know, the College Park community and not only that, but building my relationships with my program here,” Scott said. “Sometimes I don’t get enough time to talk to each person in our program. I mean, there’s a lot of kids, so take the time to, you know, create better relationships within each person.”
