AYLUS Oakland Gardens Removal of Invasive Species and Raking Leaves at Kissena Park (10/20/2025)
On October 20th, 2025 AYLUS Oakland Gardens had their 200th event at Kissena Park with Park Supervisor Roxana and the other park staff. During the event we removed invasive species and raked leaves. This event took place from 8:45 AM to 11:45 AM, with 48 members showing up to help.
Before the start of the event, to show their appreciation to the work our members have been doing for Kissena park, Roxana and the park staff set up a breakfast of bagels, croissants, and orange juice for our members to enjoy. They did this even though they had no need for it, but wanted to out of the goodness of their hearts. Our members were deeply touched by this kindhearted gesture. We made sure to show Roxana and the park staff our appreciation through working hard in our event.
Roxana and her team then taught us what we would be doing today. We learned that we were going to be removing invasive species and plants. After, we split up the members based on age groups to determine what work and tools they would be using. The age groups were based on whether the kids were in elementary school, middle school, or high school. Younger kids got rakes, while older kids got things like clippers. There were a considerably larger amount of middle schoolers and high schoolers, so some of these members still got rakes. Elementary school kids would sometimes hold the bags while waiting for the other members to group and scoop the leaves.
Our team was split up into two groups. The two different groups worked in different places in the park. One group stayed closer to the starting area to rake up the sidewalk, covered in leaves from the trees above. The second group moved further into the park. They were removing invasive plants, like mogwarts, and climbing vines. The first group used rakes. However the second group used both rakes and clippers, along with sheer force to pull the weeds out. In total, we counted 37 bags of leaves raked. 19 were from the first group, and 18 were from the second group.
We would like to thank everyone who came and helped out at today’s event. Thank you to Roxana and the park staff for teaching us what we needed to do, how to use the tools, and for preparing the delicious breakfast for us. Thank you to the parent advisor team for their guidance. Finally, thank you to all our members who showed up. We greatly appreciate all of you!
Our Volunteers:
- Jia Qi Liu : 3 hours
- Hong Hao Liu : 3 hours
- Amy Liu : 3 hours
- Selena You : 3 hours
- Stephanie You : 3 hours
- Henry Jiang : 3 hours
- Adrian Jiang : 3 hours
- Nerissa Xu : 3 hours
- Paxton Xu : 3 hours
- Kaden He : 3 hours
- Zhiheng Zhou : 3 hours
- Ricky Song : 3 hours
- Danny Lin : 3 hours
- Iokseng Lin : 3 hours
- Iokting Lin : 3 hours
- Ioklee Lin : 3 hours
- Ioknor Lin : 3 hours
- Aiden Lin : 3 hours
- Brandon Lin : 3 hours
- Benny Yeung : 3 hours
- Patrick Yeung : 3 hours
- Elaine Sun : 3 hours
- Sophia You : 3 hours
- Luke Chen : 3 hours
- Kaisa Wu : 3 hours
- Bowen Chen : 3 hours
- Steven Zhu : 3 hours
- Austin Li : 3 hours
- Anson Gao : 3 hours
- Terrence Cao : 3 hours
- Jayden Chen : 3 hours
- RuiXuan Song : 3 hours
- Tingyue Li : 3 hours
- Cynthia Shi : 3 hours
- Tiffany Kong : 3 hours
- Vicki Lin : 3 hours
- Ryan Wu : 3 hours
- Anthony Xu : 3 hours
- Sophia Xu : 3 hours
- Vincent He : 3 hours
- Ruien Song : 3 hours
- Matthew Lin : 3 hours
- Tyrone Li : 3 hours
- Fayee Chen : 3 hours
- Aidan Zheng : 3 hours
- Yiming Chen : 3 hours
- Runyi Liu: 0.5 hours
- Jierui Liu: 0.5 hours
Parent Adviser Team:
Fannie Li: 4 hours
Karen Liao: 4 hours
Faye Liu: 4 hours
Report Written by: Sophia ShiHan You
Reviewed by: Jia Qi (Angela) Liu
