Residing near a sandy road the family of Kalea Assis sometimes makes more pit stops than necessary to pull off the illegal advertising found on stop signs.
Kalea, a Grade 6 learner at Beaulieu Preparatory School, said while compulsory community service at her school does not start until next year, she does it because she likes to see an area that is clean.
The first area she started with is the bridge located on West Road in Midrand.
Buckets, brushes and cement from previous construction projects were already at their disposal to make the bridge better looking.
“It kind of didn’t look nice. It looked messy with the bright red numbers and writing. We don’t want advertising on the bridge because it shouldn’t be there,” she said.
Her father, Miguel Assis, is the main inspiration of Kalea’s goal of having a clean community.
Kalea joined in the clean-up early this year with her family going every other day to cover the bridge.
Her family, consisting of her parents and two older brothers, are not the only ones who cover up the bridge, as she mentioned most of her neighbours help as well.
“Most of the time, my dad helps. My brothers and mom do help too sometimes.
“Sometimes other community members do help, but we don’t do it all together. We sometimes do other things together like cutting down overgrown weeds and removed rubbish a few years ago,” said Kalea.
The family only covers the bridge advertisements when they come in at a growing rate, but not on a scheduled day.
“From my side, if anything has been up for a day or two, we try to pull them off as soon as possible,” said Miguel.
“We are trying our best to care for our neighbourhood, and keep it looking as clean as possible and free from illegal advertising.”
Kalea added that people put the adverts up to look for a job and make some type of income, but added sometimes the numbers on the advertisements are false. “If you actually try to reach out and phone the number, it’s sometimes not a valid number, so I think that sometimes people just want to make money.”
Kalea thinks something like this should also be done in other communities. She wants to have other members of the community follow in her and her family’s footsteps to create a cleaner living space.
She concluded, “If other people see what we’ve done, they will try and do it in their area. We can challenge everyone, and then everyone tries to get a nice area. At the end, everyone’s area is nice and clean.”
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