Youth Groups Help Clean Up Joan Lewis Park
Tuesday, July 19th, 2022
Joan Lewis Park is one of Dalton's hidden gems, and thanks to the efforts of a local church youth group, it's shining once again. The small pocket park on Fourth Avenue recently was on the receiving end of a cleanup day with volunteers from the youth group working alongside staff from Dalton Parks and Rec and Public Works.
"Our heart is to teach teenagers about servanthood and about giving back to their cities giving back to their community and helping people," said Ray Owen, youth pastor at Church on the Hill in Dalton. His youth group invited groups from two Florida churches, the Heritage Church in Lake City and Acts Two Church from Orlando, to Dalton for a weeklong camp called Outburst and spent part of that week on service projects. Over the years, the youth groups have worked on projects with the City of Refuge, Providence Ministries, the food bank, or even just helping elderly residents with projects at their homes. The group has also volunteered to help with various projects with the Parks and Recreation Department.
At right: Youth volunteers from Dalton's Church on the Hill and two Florida churches pose together after a cleanup day at Joan Lewis Park
"We've been doing it since I've been here, probably close to 27 years," Owen said of taking his youth groups out for service projects, which this year included the groups from Florida. "Basically in the summertime when students are out of school, we'll go out on a lot of Tuesdays to work and give back."
This year, the group decided to take on a day working on spruce up Joan Lewis Park. That work included freshening up paint, putting out mulch, and cleaning up trash and debris around the park. They also trimmed trees and bushes and helped to clear brush from trails. Dalton Public Works helped out with some of the tree trimming and also hauled away everything that the volunteers were able to take out of the park. Volunteers also helped to repair and replace soccer and basketball goals.
"It’s really cool but it’s also extremely helpful to the Parks and Recreation Department and also for the neighborhood that surrounds the parks," said Caitlin Sharpe, Dalton's Parks and Rec director. "We have a big staff for maintenance but it’s sometimes not quite big enough to really be able to dig into the small projects that these groups will do. So the organizations that came out and helped us, they were able to tackle projects that are on our list to get to but not necessarily able to make priorities."
Now that Joan Lewis Park has gotten a bit of a polishing job, it's ready for the rest of the summer as a destination for neighbors to get out and enjoy the fresh air. The park is surrounded by tall trees that provide ample cooling shade for the turf soccer field, basketball court, stage, and pavilion as well as the small playground. An additional playground for older children will soon be added to the park, funded by part of the City of Dalton's Community Development Block Grant program.
"It’s just kind of an all in one park," said Sharpe. "With the shade that comes with it, with the pavilions, with the soccer field, it’s just one great little neighborhood pocket park to have."
And thanks to the help from the young volunteers, the park is now better than ever and ready for play.
"These four little boys came up as we were getting done over there and they were decked out in their soccer gear," Owen said. "We’d put the new nets up that the [Parks and Rec] gave us and it was so awesome this one kid brought his flag and it was like he was on the moon he just stuck that thing in the net and then they started playing. And we just thought it was so cool that we were able to help with that, because you know there had been a lot of glass and everything out there, and that was just one story that just really stuck with all of us."
