NIU Cares hosts community cleanup in DeKalb

DeKALB - A community-wide cleanup in DeKalb gathered folks together Friday morning through Northern Illinois University’s Cares program to help pick up trash, part of a rescheduled Earth Day event.

A volunteer group of students from Northern Illinois University, NIU Cares, took part in the community cleanup event. This year’s event was sponsored by NIU’s Student Involvement, Student Government Association and Outdoor Adventures, as well as the DeKalb Park District and city of DeKalb, Kishwaukee Water Reclamation, and local cleanup group Trash Squirrels.

NIU Cares has grown from an annual day of service in the month of April to a year-long campaign in the spring of 2021, which allows the university to expand beyond one event and spend the entire year caring for local communities.

“NIU Cares day is an April tradition, but obviously hasn’t happened the last two years during COVID,” said Meg Junk, chief of staff for the Division of Student Affairs and Executive Director for Student Involvement at NIU.

During those two years off, Junk said the group had many conversations about how to grow the program year round.

“NIU cares more than one day a year, so then we wanted to kind of turn it into a concept of NIU Cares,” Junk said. “We would do events throughout the year under that umbrella, and this is now the spring event, the community wide clean-up.”

Participants from the university met outside Stevenson Towers on the western edge of campus, in one of the nearby lots lot at 9 a.m. Friday to check in and receive group T-shirts.

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Matthew Outzen, a Northern Illinois University senior from Fulton and a member of NIU Cares, picks up garbage Friday, April 29, 2022, on campus around the West Lagoon. NIU Cares, with the help of the Trash Squirrels, was taking part in a community cleanup event, going to several locations in DeKalb to pick up litter. (Mark Busch - mbusch@shawmedia.com/Mark Busch - mbusch@shawmedia.co)

Community members outside of NIU joined the group at 9:30 a.m. throughout DeKalb to begin the cleanup.

Locations included Welsh Park, Rotary Park, Lorusso Lagoon, Blackhawk Road, Stevenson Towers, Locust Street, the Toddler’s Garden at Welsh Park all the way to University Plaza, Watson Creek west to East Lagoon and Hopkins Park in DeKalb.

Junk said she wants to continue to reach more of the community and make the event even bigger as the years go on.

“I talked to some folks from the city and on campus and came up with a list of people that do this kind of work including Trash Squirrels,” she said. “So we then created a little team and came together every couple of weeks to talk through how to make this happen.”

Trash Squirrels, with the help of local businessThere’s Fun In Store in DeKalb, set up a tent near Stevenson and provided trash bags, gloves, wagons, pullers, safety vests, snacks and beverages for those who attended the cleanup.

“We have students who just enjoy volunteering and signed up, we have some students who are out here because facility encouraged them to, and we have students who are out here as part of student organizations trying to get services hours,” said Junk.