On January 14, 2024, from 9:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m, AYLUS Oakland Gardens members went to Crocheron Park Tennis Court to rake the leaves next to it. On this day, the winds could be compared to a hurricane and it was cold enough to freeze over ponds and lakes, but many of our AYLUS members still came to help our community.
The leaves were wet from the rain yesterday and made the bags harder to lift and fill due to how heavy it was. To complete this task, our members worked together in little groups to fill as many bags as possible. During this event, new volunteers joined us. They didn’t know how to do it so our veteran volunteers aided them in the learning process. Eventually, they got the hang of it and managed to rake leaves without any help. As we counted the full bags at the end of our event, we found out that we managed to fill up 153 bags full of leaves.
After we raked the leaves, the floor looked much neater than before and it was much safer for other people in the park to walk because it made the floor less slippery and dangerous. After we put the leaves in bags, park workers took the bags and turned them into mulch to help the young trees grow and survive the winter. While we were raking the leaves, there were pickleball and tennis players that were on the court. They commented that we did a great job and it was very helpful for the community. They also mentioned how clean the park looked after we cleaned it up.
In the end, we’d like to thank German Ortiz and Chris Burton. German Ortiz helped us open the tool shed to give us all the tools we needed. He also showed our parent advisor the password to the tool shed because he trusted her so much after all the times we worked together. Chris Burton collected our old gloves because they were too small and dirty. He helped supply us with new gloves that were perfect.
Our volunteers:
Hong Hao (Alfred) Liu: 3 hours
Stephanie ShiRan You: 3 hours
Sophia ShiHan You: 3 hours
Ricky Song: 3 hours
Ioknor Lin: 3 hours
Ioklee Lin: 3 hours
Iokseng Lin: 3 hours
Ryan Wu: 3 hours
Hannah Zheng: 3 hours
Emily Zheng: 3 hours
Amy Liu: 3 hours
Vicki Lin: 3 hours
Blake Han: 3 hours
Erica Wu: 3 hours
Tianxiang (Daniel) Ding: 3 hours
Andrew Zeng: 3 hours
Jiayuan (Mike) He: 3 hours
Tong Ren: 3 hours
Le Ren: 3 hours
Hao Chen Liu: 3 hours
Yichen Liu: 3 hours
Junzhe Ling: 3 hours
Yuxin Liu: 3 hours
Hangxu (Brian) Yu: 3 hours
Jonathan Luo: 2 hours
Lawrence Luo: 2 hours
Report by Stephanie ShiRan You and Hong Hao (Alfred) Liu
Reviewed by Jia Qi Liu (Angela)
