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Letter From Our Board Chair and Our Executive Director

Dear Friends of Keep Philadelphia Beautiful,

From community cleanups to educational events and special projects, 2013 has been an exciting year for Keep Philadelphia Beautiful (KPB).

As the City’s affiliate for Keep America Beautiful, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to building and sustaining vibrant communities, we are focused on litter prevention, recycling education and promotion, and waste reduction. Keep Philadelphia Beautiful works throughout our City to foster environmental stewardship as a tool for community building and economic development – which we do through going in to classrooms as well as organizing cleanup opportunities and special events in neighborhoods in every section of the City.

But that’s not all. We have several larger initiatives underway that we are eager to share with you and continue to grow in the months and years to come.

We hope the enthusiasm we feel about Keep Philadelphia Beautiful’s work in 2013 shines through this document. Over the last twelve months KPB has built a strong foundation to further fulfill our mission of community building through community greening – to reach even more students and increase the quantity and depth of the work we do in communities throughout Philadelphia.

We could not have accomplished so much without our friends and partners, including the Philadelphia Streets Department, Keep America Beautiful, and so many others. We want to thank them for their continued support of our mission and our organization.

As we start the new year with excitement and dedication, Keep Philadelphia Beautiful’s Board and staff look forward to continuing to work with each of you in the months and years to come to help beautify the City we love. Sincerely,

Daniel P. McElhatton, Esquire, Board Chair

Michelle Feldman, Executive Director PS – As always, we want to hear from you. Contact our offices at 215-854-4000, and sign up for our newsletter here: www.keepphiladelphiabeautiful.org.

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Keep Philadelphia Beautiful had a busy 2013 community clean-up season – hosting successful cleanups in Tacony Creek Park, Olney, South Kensington, Fairmount, and LOVE Park.

Over 100 different volunteers worked with us, and our partners, to remove over 300 bags of litter from our streets. Our cleanup season began in the great Northeast section of the City – partnering with Clear Channel, Radio 104.5, and the Tookany-Tacony/Frankford Watershed Partnership to hold a cleanup of Tacony Creek Park. We hosted 35 volunteers, and picked up more than 60 bags of trash and recyclables.

KPB also spearheaded a two day community cleanup in Olney with the North 5th Street Revitalization Project and TD Bank’s Equipment Finance team. With the help of 35 volunteers, we collected 60 contractor bags of litter, removed 350 bandit signs, submitted 30 requests to the City of Philadelphia’s 3-1-1 non-emergency reporting system, and distributed 855 informational brochures encouraging residents and businesses to keep the North 5th Street commercial corridor clean. KPB was also proud to partner with Resources for Human Development’s Equal Dollars Community Currency program, New Kensington CDC, South Kensington Community Partners, Fishtown Neighbors Association, and the Fishtown Area Business Association on a community cleanup throughout South Kensington. Thirty-three amazing volunteers picked up 36 bags of trash – and we conducted a great composting workshop at La Finquita, a local urban farm.

KPB ended our cleanup season with two last events in Center City’s LOVE Park and the Fairmount neighborhood. With help from our friends at Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, Johnson, Mirmiran and Thompson, Inc, and our Board Chair’s law firm, McElhatton Foley, PC, 13 bags of trash, recyclables and leaves were removed from LOVE Park, and half a ton of mulch was applied to raised garden beds throughout the site. Additionally, we partnered with the Fairmount Civic Association to pick up 75 bags of litter and leaves throughout the neighborhood with the help of 35 volunteers.

How Keep Philadelphia Beautiful is Cleaning Up

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Keep Philadelphia Beautiful also spearheads educational programming for all ages regarding proper waste disposal and the adverse environmental and social impacts of litter.

In 2013 alone, KPB spoke to 800 students in over 20 schools, and partnered with organizations such as the Mural Arts Program to do so. In addition to our in-classroom activities, we helped plan two larger educational events focused on recycling and sustainable waste disposal in the City.

KPB partnered with Young Involved Philadelphia (YIP), an organization dedicated to fostering civic engagement among Philadelphia’s young adults, to jointly organize a panel discussion on trash, recycling, and composting in the City. The event, part of YIP’s annual State of Young Philly series, featured speakers from the Philadelphia Streets Department, Bennett Compost, and Waste Management. All three panelists spoke about how the City is moving towards more sustainable waste disposal systems and processes, and what each of us can do in our daily lives to support these efforts. After the official program, over eighty attendees visited a series of interactive stations featuring twelve organizations from throughout the City all working to make Philadelphia more sustainable through reuse and proper waste disposal.

And on November 15th, we celebrated America Recycles Day, a national community- driven awareness event spearheaded by Keep America Beautiful and dedicated to promoting and celebrating recycling in the U.S., with our friends at Recyclebank and the Philadelphia Streets Department. We filled Rittenhouse Square in Center City Philadelphia with resources and information about recycling in the City, as well as representatives from local organizations focused on recycling and reuse. Streets Department Commissioner David Perri kicked off the day by officially declaring it to be America Recycles Day in Philadelphia.

Education: Special Events and Classroom Activities

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Keep Philadelphia Beautiful also launched several special initiatives this year focused on community building and beautification, civic engagement, and environmental education. Stay tuned for developments regarding each of these projects described below, and additional programming, throughout 2014.

Science Leadership Academy

Keep Philadelphia Beautiful and the Science Leadership Academy’s new Beeber Campus have teamed up on a year-long partnership focused on civic engagement through environmental education.

KPB is teaching four mini-courses, eight sessions each, focused on turning recyclable materials into community problem solving tools. Students work together to carry out five do-it-yourself (DIY) projects, as a prism for discussing public policy efforts underway to make Philadelphia increasingly sustainable.

These projects will allow students to discuss how simple activities, completed collectively and for little money, can make an impact on problems faced in our communities; these activities also show how every item can have a “second life,” and how that second life can help solve seemingly large and unsolvable problems.

After those five projects are completed, students spend the last three weeks of the course creating and completing their own do-it-yourself projects geared toward addressing a community-based problem that they experience and care about in their own neighborhoods. Not only do students gain critical thinking skills, but they learn about their City and their neighborhood through a process of research and discovery designed to motivate and illuminate. At the end of the school year, we will hold an event open to the public to showcase the work of each student.

We believe that cultivating thoughtful, civic-mind-ed Philadelphians involves allowing students to get their hands dirty, work together, and lead projects that will solve the problems they most care about. These beliefs are the underpinnings of this mini-course.

Throughout 2014 and beyond, KPB will be looking to spread this program to additional schools and educational institutions in Philadelphia.

Some of our partners...

• The Philadelphia Streets Department

• Recyclebank

• The Philadelphia Department of Commerce

• The Philadelphia Managing Director’s Office: PhillyRising Collaborative

• Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation TreePhilly Campaign

• The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics

• Waste Management

• TTF Watershed Partnership, Inc

• The Science Leadership Academy

• Need in Deed

• North 5th Street Revitalization Project

• Bennett Compost

• The Urban Tree Connection

• Young Involved Philadelphia

Special Projects

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Community Composting Program

Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, in partnership with the Urban Tree Connection and Bennett Compost, was thrilled to receive a $10,000 Think Green Grant from Keep America Beautiful and Waste Management to establish a community composting program in the Haddington neighborhood. Each week, local youth pick up compostable household waste from 25 participating families, and deliver fresh food from the Urban Tree Connection’s Neighborhood Foods Farm. We are also conducting educational opportunities for all Haddington residents about the benefits of composting and how to properly compost in Philadelphia.

Destination Frankford

Community beautification can take on a lot of meanings – from community cleanups to tree plantings to public art, which is why KPB is so pleased about our involvement with the Destination Frankford project, spearheaded by the City of Philadelphia’s Planning Commission.

With funding from Art Place America, the Frankford project aims to use public art, including a sculpture at Womrath Park (the “gateway” to Frankford) and a “pop up” store and gallery for Frankford artists, to brand Frankford as a neighborhood for entrepreneurs within the creative economy. In doing so, Destination Frankford works to enhance and expand the resources of the entire Frankford community.

Keep Philadelphia Beautiful is thrilled to be a part of the Destination Frankford team, assisting with the digital aspect of the program. Visit DestinationFrankford.com, where you’ll find updates on the project as well as profiles of Frankford artists and entrepreneurs.

Special Projects

PresidentDaniel P. McElhatton, EsquireMcElhatton Foley, P.C.

TreasurerDennis Lee Office of Stephanie Singer,City Commissioner

Loraine Ballard-MorrillNews & Public Affairs DirectorClear Channel Radio

Alix HowardDirector of Education and OutreachTTF Watershed Partnership, Inc

Justin LandNortheast Public Affairs Manager Dow Chemical Company

Charles RaudenbushWaste Management

Barley Van CliefTree Tenders Project ManagerPennsylvania Horticultural Society

Carlton WilliamsCommissionerCity of Philadelphia, Licenses and Inspections

Zandi ZunguConcerned Resident

Board of Directors