By: Ricardo Abundiz, Jr., SOUL Student / PR Intern

You’re never too young or too old to take care of and help our home, planet Earth; case in point, Lily Martinez – the 4-year-old daughter of HR’s Ana Martinez.

One day the young environmentalist turned to her mother and said “trash on the floor is bad for the Earth”. That’s when Ana decided to search for events that would nurture her daughter’s new found passion; she found Generation Green Youth Serve Earth Day, a clean-up event cosponsored by our very own Local Conservation Corps’s AmeriCorps program.

Participants – a total of 150 volunteers including 36 AmeriCorps members, three LCC staff, Ana from HR and her daughter – reported for duty at San Joaquin River Parkway’s River Center. Ana and Lily were assigned to work in Woodward Park where, alongside other volunteers and families, they dug holes, planted new trees, cleaned up trash from the area, and raked leaves and excess grass. Other volunteers removed non-native plants and built bird boxes for western bluebirds.