BENSON — An effort is underway to beautify Benson by cleaning up trash and debris throughout the city’s streets and alleyways.
Organized by Elton Bowman and Pam Masters, the all-volunteer “Brighten the Path” project is slated for March 20, with community volunteers asked to meet at the Lion's Park ramada at 8 a.m.
Bowman and Masters organized the first city-wide cleanup in 2018 on the Saturday before Easter, with extraordinary results.
“We got the word out for that first event and received tremendous support from the community with 42 volunteers,” Bowman said. “We picked up 7,000 cubic feet of trash that day. The difference it made throughout Benson was amazing. In the course of that year, we held four different pickup events and collected 45,000 pounds of trash.”
Brighten the Path cleanup projects continued through 2019 with similar results, but the effort was shut down in 2020 because of COVID. After the yearlong hiatus, Bowman and Masters are back at it.