29-04-2025
Young Men's Leadership Academy takes part in cleanup
Apr. 28—Keep Odessa Beautiful hosted another of its cleanup events Monday morning.
The cleanup, which involved the Young Men's Leadership Academy and Odessa Mayor Cal Hendrick, took place on West Loop 338 Service Road between 16th and 22nd street as everyone helped pick up trash in an effort to beautify Odessa.
The event was designed to empower local students through leadership development, community involvement and cultural celebration.
President of Keep Odessa Beautiful Sunshine Thompson said the event was about educating the community.
"Educating our community on our mission is our most important part," Thompson said. "It's about reducing, reusing, recycling, and educating the community on how we can be better for our community."
Another reason for the community to help pick up trash is safety.
"If our community is clean, we have a beautiful and safe environment," Thompson said. "It makes things unsafe because it's blowing around, blocking, maybe causing traffic problems."
Thompson estimates that about a hundred students were out helping pick up trash during the event.
She talked about why it was important to have students help clean up.
"Because this is our future," Thompson said. "They're the ones that are going to be our future leaders. So when they know better, they'll do better, just like we could have been doing if we would have had more education as them growing up. So this is our future. Our kids are our future to have a better future, a cleaner, safer future."
Thompson said Keep Odessa Beautiful aims to do as many more of these cleanups "as humanly possible."
"We've handed out vests and the bags and the gloves that they are using today," Thompson said of the role Keep Odessa Beautiful had in Monday's cleanup. "And so we brought that to the event and we provided all the materials for them."
Hendrick has been involved with multiple cleanups since becoming mayor.
He said the need to clean up Odessa became apparent during election season last fall when putting up signs.
"One thing that struck me is that Odessa had become very, very, very unclean," Hendrick said. "There was trash bags flying on all the different mesquite trees. It became a source of irritation for me. As I stopped, everywhere to put up a sign I was picking up beer bottles, coke bottles, water bottles, Gatorade bottles, trash, bags that it became disgusting.
"And so one of the themes I have when I came into being mayor, once I was elected, is that we needed to clean up Odessa."
He said Monday's cleanup was a part of the effort to clean up the city.
"We're helping Odessa become a better city, a cleaner city, one we can be proud of," Hendrick said. "So today is part of that overall effort. We're going to clean up Odessa."
