Fullflame leads a successful community clean-up
This shows that the community can achieve a lot by working together.
The FullFlame Life Church once again demonstrated its commitment to a cleaner and safer neighbourhood by embarking on another fruitful community clean-up outreach.
The clean-up on September 28 focused on the major intersection of Hendrik Potgieter, Doreen and Peter roads, where teams tackled overgrown grass, removed illegal signage and collected numerous bags of litter.
With the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) ensuring safety and Pikitup’s swift waste collection response, the event turned into another successful step toward a cleaner community.
“We were motivated to get involved in doing something about the condition of our neighbourhood and also be a blessing to the community,” the church’s community outreach co-ordinator, Thato Phiri shares while reflecting on the spirit behind their consistent clean-up efforts.
The clean-up team focused on several locations within a 3km radius. Their attention was particularly drawn to high-traffic areas that tend to accumulate greater litter.
“We do several locations in the neighbourhood where we see the need for it. Also, high traffic areas where there seems to be greater opportunity for litter and neglect in cleaning,” Thato adds.
About 60 to 70 volunteers joined this endeavour, illustrating how the power of community collaboration can achieve tangible results. Beyond cleaning, the church’s outreach aims to make a broader positive impact on the neighbourhood, as they highlight some of the challenges they face.
“Getting the public behind us to also start cleaning up, trying to relocate people sleeping and littering, doing drugs and committing petty crimes on the streets is one of the challenging aspects of organising a clean-up. We are also having difficulty with the illegal abortion stickers on the city’s infrastructure. We contacted the person after every clean-up but unfortunately, they stuck them back. We have contacted the JMPD to assist us further with this,” remarks Thato.
The ongoing efforts are not without their success stories. Thato noted the change that’s been happening since the church started these clean-ups.
“I think the clean-ups impact the community in a great way, in fact when we started, there was not that much being done in our area regarding clean-up but there are other groups also starting to get involved in their own capacity cleaning the neighbourhood.”
Clean-ups and walking and praying over the community are held every six to eight weeks, demonstrating the church’s dedication to maintaining motivation for a cleaner and better environment.
For those wanting to get involved, FullFlame Life Church welcomes new volunteers and more details can be found on their website.
