Some people may think of pride as one of the seven deadly sins, but to the people of Ypsilanti, PRIDE is something totally different. To these people, PRIDE stands for People Restoring Image and Developing the Environment, and that’s nothing to be ashamed about.
Starting at 9 a.m. May 19, Ypsi will be celebrating its 18th annual PRIDE day. The morning consists of volunteers meeting their site captains at predetermined locations. According to the website, ypsipride.org, the volunteers will be “picking up litter, painting, sweeping, cleaning, planting flowers, cleaning up the river and giving our community an overall facelift.”
Co-Chairman Jane Carr said, “There’s so many different levels of social life. I think the idea was that this was one thing that all of us can do. Not all of us have the money to donate, but everyone can put on work gloves.”
After cleaning up the town, the volunteers will meet at noon at North Bay Park to enjoy food and entertainment. Carr said, “The initial idea of afternoon is that you do work in the public space in the morning, and spend the afternoon in your own backyard.”
The Ypsilanti community is encouraged to continue cleaning and taking care of their city even after PRIDE day. Carr said, “We have people that are site captains year after year that are intimately connected to their parks. I know that there are a lot of people who are invested in their parks.”
Part of the reason why Ypsilanti needs these volunteers is because, “The community of Ypsilanti doesn’t have a park commission,” Carr said. “There really isn’t a parks office. One of the goals we have in the area is to have the Adopt a Park. One of the things that we had thought about is to make PRIDE day a kind of kick off day for adopting a park.”
On top of working to encourage the Adopt a Park program, the committee for Ypsi PRIDE has some other goals. Carr said, “We’ve talked about working with other townships. We would like to include Pittsfield Township, Superior Township and Augusta Township. We would love to reach out to a more extensive community.”
Not only does Ypsi PRIDE want to reach out to other communities, but also bring in more people from the Ypsilanti area itself. Carr wants to, “Bring all the different aspects of the community, children, students, anyone who works or lives here has the opportunity to come together on this one day to make the place look better.”
Part of getting people involved in cleaning up the community is understanding how the community works.
“The chamber of commerce in Ypsilanti had something they called Leadership Ypsilanti. It was basically a week-long course you could take,” said Carr. “You could learn about the police department and the fire department. The idea was to get people more actively involved in the community. In 1995, the [Leadership Ypsilanti] graduating class decided they wanted to leave something lasting behind, so they created Ypsi PRIDE.”
That first year, Ypsi PRIDE brought in 1,300 volunteers, according to the website. It was also the recipient of the 1996 Distinguished Citizen Award, presented by Keep Michigan Beautiful Inc.
Since then, the event has grown in size. However, the growing numbers only mean that more parks can be cleaned up and more volunteers are needed to organize the event.
Carr said, “Our committee is entirely made up of volunteers from the community. We’re always looking for more people who would be interested in being involved. We love having new people.”
Being on the committee means a new way of viewing things.
“We start planning usually in November. The Pride committee meets twice a month,” said Carr. “It becomes something I think about quite a lot. It also gives me opportunity to get more involved in the community. It’s not just PRIDE related; I see that it impacts my involvement in Ypsilanti.”
Even if you don’t have the time or ability to be on the committee, PRIDE still
encourages people to come out just for the morning and help build pride for your community.
