Today is the 132nd event of the AYLUS Oakland Gardens Branch on December 8th, 2024. This event would be the last event of the year at Kissena Park. Due to this, as a thank you, District 07 has provided us with breakfast to celebrate all the work that was done this year. On top of that, the District Manager Kevin McClain even took time out of his day to visit the volunteers that are aiding the preservation of the park.
During this event, our members formed groups that contained 6-7 people, splitting off to different parts of the park. Some groups worked to pull the vines off from the ground and trees in the area that surrounded the lake and to weed the general area as well. The vines are English Ivy, where you have to pull one strand at a time to fully get rid of the growing ivy. In these groups, the older volunteers were given clippers to cut the rose bushes and any large plants/branches that are in there as well. These are then cut down into smaller pieces to make transporting them safer, especially with the rose bushes as they contain a lot of thorns. Once they are cut down into smaller pieces, they are then stored into plastic bags along with the English Ivy.
The other groups had rakes, brooms, and shovels to clean up the leaves on the outside of the fence and the playground. These leaves are raked into piles through using the rakes and brooms, with the shovels helping to pick up and store the leaves into paper bags (where the paper bags are also not harmful to the environment). At the playground area, there were some soft areas of ground, where we were instructed by Mattia, the gardener, to use rakes instead of shovels to not displace the dirt in the soft areas. The leaves are bagged in such a way that we compress the leaves in the bag so that we can continue to store more leaves in the paper bag. However, as there were so many leaves, we managed to use up the first batch of paper bags that was brought over. But thanks to Roxana, she went to get more paper bags so all the leaves can be fully bagged away. Under the guidance of Roxana, our members had made significant progress, as we managed to rake up around 120 paper bags filled with leaves and around 22 plastic bags of branches, vines, and rose bushes. That makes it a total of around 142 bags total, and we brought these bags outside of the park, making sure to leave the sidewalk free to walk on so that people can pass through while the bags are outside waiting to be collected and used as mulch.
Special thanks to District Manager Kevin McClain for taking time out of his busy schedule to come and see the volunteers. Thank you to District 7 for providing our team today with breakfast. A big great thank you to Roxana and her team for all the work they had done for us throughout the year, for guiding us and nurturing growth. We loved working with you this year, and we wish to continue working with you in 2025 and in the many years ahead of us.
Our Volunteers:
Jia Qi Liu (Angela): 3 hours
Hong Hao Liu (Alfred): 3 hours
Sophia ShiHan You: 3 hours
Stephanie ShiRan You: 3 hours
Ricky Song: 3 hours
Isabella Wang: 3 hours
Iokseng Lin: 3 hours
Ioknor Lin: 3 hours
Ioklee Lin: 3 hours
Zihan Shi: 3 hours
Tian Zhu Xie: 3 hours
Jie Rui Liu: 3 hours
Yiming Chen: 3 hours
Nuoyan Chen: 3 hours
Nuo Heng Chen: 3 hours
Queenie Qiu: 3 hours
Justin Qiu: 3 hours
Justin Cheong: 3 hours
Junlong Mei: 3 hours
Tian Xiang Ding: 3 hours
Eric Zheng: 3 hours
Vicky Liu: 3 hours
Vicki Lin: 3 hours
Emerson Chen: 3 hours
Bowen Chen: 3 hours
Austin Yuel: 3 hours
Victor Tu: 3 hours
YuYan Fan: 3 hours
Zhuoning Li: 3 hours
Tiffany Nhu: 3 hours
Michelle Song: 3 hours
Shirley Chiu: 3 hours
Tiffany Pan: 3 hours
Alex Lu: 3 hours
Rex He: 3 hours
Steven Zhu: 3 hours
Yuan Gu: 3 hours
Joanna Qu: 3 hours
Jasmine Qu: 3 hours
Alana Lin: 3 hours
Каisa Wu: 3 hours
Jerry Shan: 3 hours
Sophia Xu: 3 hours
Anthony Xu: 3 hours
Karis Lau: 3 hours
Luke Chen: 3 hours
Hannah Liu: 3 hours
Amber Tsai: 3 hours
Opal Tsai: 3 hours
Leon Chen: 3 hours
Ella Tai: 3 hours
Darren Li: 3 hours
Austin Li: 3 hours
Elina Lee: 3 hours
Ian Lee: 3 hours
Nerissa Xu: 3 hours
Paxton Xu: 3 hours
Matthew Lin: 3 hours
Parent Adviser Team:
Teng Fei Liu: 4 hours
Hsinhui Liao: 4 hours
Cui Fang Li: 4 hours
Report written by: Jia Qi Liu (Angela)
