Volunteers help pick up trash in Abbeville

Volunteers spent last Saturday making Abbeville a cleaner place.
The effort was part of the Great American Cleanup. Nearly 100 volunteers took part.
“It was great,” said Keep Abbeville Beautiful’s Charlene Beckett, who helped organize the event. “It was wonderful and the weather cooperated.”
Keep Abbeville Beautiful and the Abbeville Garden Club co-sponsored the event. Along with members of those groups, volunteers from other organizations took part. Among them were New Life Church Royal Rangers, the J.H. Williams Beta Club, students from Vermilion Catholic, Boy Scout Troop 85. Bishop B.K. Stevens of Faith Hope Baptist Church also brought a group.
“We would like to thank all of those groups,” Beckett said. “We would also like to thank Mayor (Mark) Piazza and Councilman Francis Plaisance, who helped us.”
Piazza said he was pleased with the effort given by all.
“We had more volunteers than we could have expected,” Piazza said. “I would like to thank all of those who came out and did their part.
“It was great for Abbeville because it was a real community effort.”
Each group was assigned a different area of the city. Areas of focus included Magdalen Square, the train tracks on South State Street, Old Kaplan Highway and Park Avenue, North State Street and portions around Herod Village on Martin Luther King Drive.
In all, the volunteers picked up 54 bags of trash.
“That filled up a dumpster,” Beckett said.
Troop 85 Scoutmaster Guy Poche said the cleanup served as a great learning experience for the youth.
“We participate because events like this help us instill in our scouts community pride and the value of teamwork, but mostly because its the right thing to do,” he said.