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This page is dedicated to Earth Day events Friends of Mandan Park and Mount Vernon Gardens have had over the years. There is a small video below that you can watch that pretty well covers the same material. Eventually we will go into more details and add more pictures about these and other Earth Day events.
This page is dedicated to Earth Day events Friends of Mandan Park and Mount Vernon Gardens have had over the years. There is a small video below that you can watch that pretty well covers the same material. Eventually we will go into more details and add more pictures about these and other Earth Day events.
2021 Earth Day Events
2021 Earth Day Events
2021 Earth Day Events
1st Earth Day event along the Missouri River.
It was early in the morning when we met with a leader from Conservation Nebraska. Channel 7 News team was there with Jose Vicente. It was a steep walk to the river where we picked up piles of mostly plastic bottles that had got trapped in driftwood and grasses along the river bank.
The trash was so bad you could literally stand and fill one bag after another in spots. Later in the day we had another event at the upper part of the park.
While our struggles to help preserve the beauty of Mandan Park have led to times of bitter disappointment as well as anger, there have been moments of grace we will never forget. One of these was when a traveling minister saw our plea for volunteers for Earth Day 2021 and showed up to help with his small daughter. She insisted on helping us pick up trash until she was too tired to walk. Wherever they are now, I hope they realize how much their presence inspired us." Jacky Paulson
The 2nd Earth Day event was the same day in the upper park and included an Earth Day challenge of picking up at least one bag to earn points toward rewards. The weather was nice and everyone that participated picked up more than the required one bag. We had fun with the event and continued running the Earth Day challenge three more times.
The 3rd Earth Day challenge in 2021 was approximately a month later, allowing for time for trash to build up and participants to be able to pick up at least one bag of trash. Weather was not favorable; however, we did have a decent turnout and quite a bit of trash was removed from along the forest edges.
2022 Earth Day Events
2022 Earth Day Events
Earth Day 2022
We had Earth Day challenge events twice in the park. You can read the details of the challenge. Weather was nice for the first event but not as nice for the second; however, participants worked diligently and filled more than the requested one bag. One pile is at the location of the old pavillion at the south end of Mandan Park followed by an event about a month later at the north end of Mandan Park.
You can see the results below are quite impressive and the piles speak for themselves. We are very thankful for the wonderful participants at these events. Below is a liink to our Facebook post.
Earth Day 2023
With the historic Gifford Park Roadway being closed and construction in the park making it difficult to hold an event, we decided to try to do outreach by attending the Earth Day event at Elmwood Park. We fashioned brochures and flyers as well as large picture cards and designed a large banner for the event.
It turned out to be extremely cold that day and I believe a Nebraska game was playing early so attendance was low. Our steadfast group of volunteers did hold in, however, for a few hours until we called Uncle as we turned blue and left. It was also nice to run into Cindy from the Blue Bucket Project as well as Steven Levy from the VIP program.
Earth Day 2024
We had an early event since so many of our participants and members are also involved with the Mandan Park Neighborhood Association. With the scheduling of our Omaha spring cleanup and Marrs landing two days prior to Earth Day, we thought it would be best to just get a head start on an Earth Day clean up. We cleaned more than a mile of the trails and about a mile of the hills.
We gathered 37 bags of trash and numerous other items from the woods and moved them for easy city pickup, some of it more than half a mile from the pickup spot.
We are very busy this time of the year helping Mandan Park Neighborhood Association with a Omaha sponsored neighborhood cleanup. This helps reduce trash thought our area not just in the parks. We are also getting outreach from Maria Osnaya once again on the accumulated trash under the Gibson Bridge Road. This poses a serious health hazard as well as contamination to our waterways. Thank you, Maria and Friends of Mandan Park member, Laurie, for helping bring attention to this problem.
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