Kensington teens turn a dump site into a garden

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Under a blistering sun in the scorching heat, Isis Rios stabbed the dry dirt with a shovel, loosening small rocks and tossing them into a bucket.

“We have everything organized in a certain way,” she pointed out. “We have our compost going on, rocks for later usage.”

Rios was one of a dozen teenagers sweating through a project to clear a 16-by-60-foot lot, just a block from Kensington and Allegheny avenues, where the opioid epidemic leads a host of challenges in their neighborhood, including the illegal dumping that blighted this small patch of ground. The work is hard, but Rios said she doesn’t mind.

“We’re helping to make it be something better than just a place for weeds, trash and other stuff.”

The kids are part of Klean Kensington, which founder Jeremy Chen calls “teen-led community development.” The nonprofit won a $17,000 grant from a group of partners —Thomas Jefferson University (TJU), Circular Philadelphia, Glitter and the Trash Academy — who hope to show that relatively cheap and easy improvements can turn a vacant lot into a community asset.

“This was a perfect site for us,” said Shari Hersh of Trash Academy. “This is probably one of the worst areas in the city for dumping. There’s eight dump sites in a ten-block area. And so part of the project is something communities all over Philly know about, which is, if you reclaim a lot that is being dumped on and used for negative activities and transform it, it changes dumping in the neighborhood because it normalizes beauty, it shows care, it shows youth building change.”

The work began in early spring, when the teens voted on what they wanted to put on the lot. Esperanza owns it but struggled to keep it clean, so it took some imagination, but they settled on a mini-forest for kids to play in and a pollinator garden for adults to enjoy.

“In our area, we don’t have a lot of trees or pollinators, so just the thought of wildlife, like nature, it would be nice at a park,” said Jeremy Vasquez.

He will be a park ambassador when the project is complete.

“My job will be, I’m going to have to make sure it’s nice and clean and neat for the little kids to come in, make sure it’s safe for them,” he explained.

The ambassadors — there are three — are part of the vision for long-term change on the lot. They’ll encourage the use of bins for trash. There will also be signs to discourage dumping. Trash Academy is holding dumping prevention education and workshops. Glitter will do weekly cleanups and measure litter levels before and after the lot remake.

“While we hope it’s permanent, we don’t have any assurances about how long it will be here, but at least temporarily we can show that this type of intervention works,” said Kim Douglas, director of landscape architecture at TJU and creator of Park in a Truck.

Douglas added that parks not only improve the quality of life in a neighborhood but also health.

“It may be a very small drop in a very large problem, but we’re hoping that it starts a conversation about these types of spaces and how critical they are to health.”

For the kids, it’s also about a sense of purpose.

They are making $19 per hour for their work, but said their main motivation was helping their community.

“It’s a lot of hard work, but we’re building a park for all the people,” said Jaleb Gardana.

“Just thinking about helping and working, as a teen, you feel you are mature,” added Janey Alfred.

A few neighbors came out on their stoops and watched the buzzing activity on the lot. A resident named David found it a hopeful sign.

“Something coming to the neighborhood that was once a dump site that they’re turning into something beautiful, especially in a neighborhood such as this, anything beautiful like that is good.”