Sunday Morning Activities and New Friends!

Beautify CNMI! welcomed several new members to the coalition this weekend. The Saipan Unity Lion's Club, which is already very active in the CNMI, invited us out to their beach cleanup between Quartermaster Road and the 13 Fishermen Memorial. The 20 volunteers filled up about 12 bags with beach debris and left over picnic utensils. They also painted and donated 30 garbage bins, which they dispersed to beach side picnic sites around the island. The Lion's Club is coordinating with DNLR Parks & Recreation on the pickup and disposal of the trash disgarded in the bins.

We also had another community cleanup in the Garapan Tourist District. We had help from our backbone volunteers from MOVER, Juanita Fajardo, Adam Sablan, Cinta Kaipat's Office, and the Kaipat kids, Jun, Josiah, Lelugh, Franklin, and AJ, as well as some newer friends from Kinpachi, the Japanese Association of the CNMI, and Tijuana Mexican Grille (go eat there!) In total there were 40 volunteers helping out in Garapan.

Japanese Peace Memorial Cleanup

The Japanese Association of the CNMI cleans up the Japanese Peace Memorial in Marpi once a year. This year Beautify CNMI! helped out.

Over 80 volunteers helped scrub down and clean up the memorial on Saturday morning.

DEQ November Cleanup Brigade

44 volunteers came to this month's DEQ Cleanup Brigade. Woot!

Saturday Morning Activities!

We were busy this morning! We were going to call today "150 on 11/04," but it didn't have the same ring as "1020 on 10/20."

DEQ had two cleanups this morning. One was in San Antonio with students from Hopwood Junior High School. About 30 students were expected to participate.

The other cleanup was the DEQ Cleanup Brigade, which takes place on the first Saturday of every month. 44 Volunteers from DEQ, Marianas High School Class of 1997, Cha Cha Oceanview Junior High School, POWER, MVA, and Marianas RC&D helped pick up trash on the beach between McDonald's on Beach Road and the 13 Fishermen Memorial.

Later in the morning there was a cleanup of the Japanese Peace Memorial in Marpi. Organized by the Japanese Association of Saipan and supported by Beautify CNMI!, over 80 volunteers came out to scrub down the shrine and honor the lives lost during WWII.

I'll post more pictures soon!

Agree/Disagree?

I wrote this about a year ago, after I returned to Saipan after having been off island for five and a half years:

My favorite thing about first arriving in Saipan is the smell. I can’t describe it. I don’t know if it is from all of the vegetation or if it comes about from being so close to the ocean, but there is a very distinct smell that you only sense when you first arrive. By the second day you can’t smell it anymore, but when you first arrive, it really reminds you that you are home.

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

Editorial

The newspapers continue to heap praise onto Beautify CNMI! Not only do they praise us, but they also print our press releases and our letters to the editor. Beautify CNMI was mentioned in an article, a letter to the editor, or an editoral every single day this week. Today was no exception:

Marianas Variety, Friday, November 3, 2006

On the positive side
By Zaldy Dandan
Variety Editor

THE beautification team led by Tina Sablan and DEQ did a great job cleaning up the island, and now the enforcement and education components must kick in for long lasting efforts to result. Thousands of volunteers arrived in force to make 10/20 a big success, and thanks should go to these community members who supported this important project.

Beautify CNMI! Slideshow

I put together a little slideshow of some of our activities over the last five months. Click HERE to open the video in Google Video. It is over 9 minutes long (we've done a lot of stuff!), so you might want to let it load in its entirety before you watch it.



If you want a high quality version, drop me an email. Oh yeah, we should have T-shirts soon, too.