CHICAGO (WLS) — Tuesday is Earth Day, and the Excel Academy of Roseland is working to keep their neighborhood clean during the second annual Joyce Chapman Clean and Green Cleanup.
Nearly 100 students are walking up and down Roseland streets cleaning and revitalizing the neighborhood. And they’re dedicating this Earth Day to carrying out the legacy of a woman who was on a mission to give back.
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“Today we’re talking trash because we’re walking to talk,” 21st Ward Ald. Ronnie Mosley said.
Chapman’s mission consists of turning a community around.
“She noticed so much trash, and so the different parks in the neighborhood is where her like little projects,” said Ashanti Brooks, Excel Academy of Roseland operations manager.
Brooks is hosting the event to honor her mom, Chapman. She said her mother wasn’t much of a gardener, just a soul with a heart for service.
“Thirty years something later and all of her girls are in community service because that is a passion, and that was what she was, a community servant,” Brooks said.
Chapman died unexpectedly in 2023. Her life is now inspiring the next generation.
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“This is important, and I feel like that you should start caring about where they live,” Chicago Excel Academy student Shaniah Sanders said.
Sanders, 20, will be graduating from Chicago Excel Academy, a school that gives students a second chance at earning a high school diploma. She joined nearly 100 of her classmates in taking back their community.
“Being this my last year, I feel like helping out the community and showing others that not only that I’m graduating, but I’m helping my area,” Sanders said.
“To see it, to not for them to be a negative statistic, but to be a positive one,” Brooks said. “We and all adults can go out and do our part to help our communities because our environment is very important.”
Shovels in-hand, every restoration in the area is a new legacy being made.
“We were her pillars, and she was ours. And so for her, I know she’s proud,” Brooks said.
Brooks said, come next year, they want to expand their program, inviting more students, their parents and families and taking their cleaning efforts beyond the Roseland neighborhood.
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