On Sunday, March 15th, 2026, from 8:45 to 11:45, the AYLUS Oakland Gardens Branch went to Kissena Park to rake leaves for our 217th event. We teamed up with Adalitt Mata and Peter, who work under Jobe Walker, who is a park supervisor. Not only does he look after Kissena Park, but he also supervises many other parks in District 7. He told us that because of the rain, the people didn’t have a chance to help. Also on Sundays, many people were not available to help, so they invited us over to help rake up the leaves. This weekend was also the perfect day because it was not unbearably cold, as in the past few months of winter.
We started the event by equipping rakes, paper bags, and leaf scoops. The rakers raked leaves into piles, where the people with the leaf scoops would then scoop the leaves into the paper bags. There would also be a method of putting the bags down and using rakes to sweep the leaves into the paper bags. There would also be people picking up the paper bags and putting them into the garbage trucks. We continued this process for 3 hours, raking up all the leaves that were inside the 2 big bunches. However, due to the recent storms, the leaves became wet and heavy, which made them harder to rake and scoop up. The wet leaves led to a tougher process, but we pushed through and finished raking the leaves.
By helping our environment by raking leaves, we can make our parks look much more appealing, and we can get rid of dirty germs inside the leaves. Furthermore, by cleaning up our parks, we can keep them safe, so kids are able to play and enjoy them without the risk of being hurt. In this event, our members filled 320 paper bags. This amount of work greatly reduced the amount of leaves in this park, greatly reducing the risk of harm and an increase of safety.
We want to thank all our members who came to today’s event and contributed, helping us rake so many bags of leaves. We would also want to thank Jobe Walker, Adalitt Mata, and Peter for helping us throughout the event and giving us an opportunity to help clean up Kissena Park. We would also like to thank Vicky’s brother Virgil Lin, who is proud of what we do and have accomplished, by giving us all snacks at the end of the event.
Our Volunteers:
1. Jia Qi Liu (Angela): 3 hours
2. Ioklee Lin : 3 hours
3. Ioknor Lin : 3 hours
4. Sophia Xu : 3 hours
5. Anthony Xu : 3 hours
6. Kaitlyn Zhang : 3 hours
7. Justin Qu : 3 hours
8. Katrina Zhang : 3 hours
9. Yiming Chen : 3 hours
10. Kaisa Wu : 3 hours
11. Ryan Zheng : 3 hours
12. Zhiheng Zhou : 3 hours
13. Jiansheng Chen : 3 hours
14. Dylan Chen : 3 hours
15. Ryan Chen : 3 hours
16. Derek Chen : 3 hours
17. Jayden Wang : 3 hours
18. Amanda Wang : 3 hours
19. Ziqi Liu : 3 hours
20. Zimeng Li : 3 hours
21. Peishan Gao : 3 hours
22. Luke Chen : 3 hours
23. Henry Jiang : 3 hours
24. Adrian Jiang : 3 hours
25. Hong Lei Luo : 3 hours
26. Nicky Wong : 3 hours
27. Ashlee Chen : 3 hours
28. Ruolin Gao : 3 hours
29. Aiden Lin : 3 hours
30. Tian Zhu Xie : 3 hours
31. Haoze Gao : 3 hours
32. Austin Li : 3 hours
33. Victor Chen : 3 hours
34. Vicki Lin : 3 hours
35. Rui Zhu : 3 hours
36. Yihan Lu : 3 hours
37. Zihan Shi : 3 hours
38. Eric Zheng : 3 hours
39. Samuel Liu : 3 hours
40. Terrence Cao : 3 hours
41. Elina Lee : 3 hours
42. Evan Li : 3 hours
43. Brian Wu : 3 hours
44. Vincent He : 3 hours
45. Tyrone Li : 3 hours
46. Fayee Chen : 3 hours
47. Zhanger Li : 3 hours
48. Matthew Lin : 3 hours
49. Enda Zheng : 3 hours
50. Steven Zhu : 2 hours
51.Sophia ShiHan You: 1 hour
52. Selena You: 1 hour
53. Hong Hao Liu:1 hour
54. Stephanie You: 1 hour
Parent Adviser Team:
Fannie Li: 3.5 hours
Karen Liao: 3.5 hours
Faye Liu: 3.5 hours
Report Written by: Aiden Lin
Reviewed by: Jia Qi (Angela) Liu
