Suburban teens help clean up trash to beautify Chinatown
CHICAGO (CBS) – On a nice day, it's challenging enough to get teenagers to clean up their own neighborhoods.
But on Friday, some teens from the northwest suburbs traveled 45 minutes to clean up someone else's neighborhood. CBS 2's Noel Brennan found out why.
If you go looking, trash seems to sprout like blades of grass. Wileen Hsing picks up all the litter within reach.
"Here's where I wish I had longer arms," Hsing said.
And she's doing good work in Chinatown.
"Cigarette butts and a bottlecaps," she said going through what she found. "Mostly cigarettes and a flosser."
Hsing isn't filling up trash bags in the city all by herself. The teacher at Niles West High School leads a group of her students like Maysam Yevazali, who joined dozens of volunteers. They're trying to clean up Chinatown for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
"It gets overlooked, like how dirty these places can be, so I feel like it's just nice to clean it up, make it look nicer than it was before at least," Yevazali said.
"You know, like three people from the community have already said, 'Thank you for doing this,'" Hsing said.
One morning of work fills at least 100 bags of trash and let's the beauty of a neighborhood shine.
"This is a community that is thriving, that is supporting each other, that made it through the corona pandemic, all the anti-Asian hate and came out strong," said Hsing.
They may be focused on cleaning up, but volunteers see value everywhere they look.
"It feels like we're making an impact, so that's what I like about it," Yevazali said.
Hsing added, "If we can support this community when whatever way we can, we like to do so."
