On Saturday, June 11th, over 100 volunteers, community partners, and sponsors came out to the Church of the Ascension for a cause bigger than themselves.

The first annual Great Mills Cleanup wasn’t an event just about picking up litter. Volunteers grabbed their tools and took off to pull weeds and sweep the sidewalks, too. John Grande’s Lawn Care and Ridgell Lawncare both came out as core sponsors to trim the beyond-neglected grass in areas along Great Mills Road, to beautify the road and to ensure volunteers wouldn’t have to dig through two-feet-tall weeds to collect litter. Our sponsors and volunteers worked diligently to address every detail to make sure the community could see the results of their actions. And the results are astounding!

The Church of the Ascension graciously offered their space for the volunteers to gather before the event and afterwards for the celebration lunch, courtesy of Showtime Deli, Uncle D’s Grill, and St. Inie’s.

Barefoot Graphics supported the event by providing our event banner and directional signs at a greatly reduced rate as part of their sponsorship. Other in-kind core sponsors include Phocus Video, which contributed by filming an inspiring pre-event PSA, and the folks behind Strange Behavior Media House, who were present all day to film and document the event!

Some amazing truck drivers from Great Mills Trading Post came along at the end of the event to collect the garbage bags for us, and the St. Mary’s County Department of Public Works not only waived the service fee at the landfill for the trucks, but they offered 20 trash grabbers for volunteers to borrow. T&T Sweeping and Port-o-Let Service dropped off two mobile bathrooms for volunteers to utilize in the far locations down Great Mills Road for free, and they also took the time to bring a street sweeper through to clean the roadway itself.

Safeway graciously donated nearly 200 water bottles, 100 trash bags, packages of gloves, and sanitation supplies, and Target donated lots of snacks and supplies in order to make our celebration lunch even better. The nonprofit Clean Up SOMD provided yellow safety vests to be used by our event organizers and group leaders.

We were grateful to also have three law enforcement officers present to ensure the safety of the volunteers. Thank you to Deputy Teague and Deputy Holdsworth from St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office, and Trooper Pettitt from the State Police for being so enthusiastic and protecting our volunteers!

We want to give another huge shoutout to our amazing Core Sponsors of this first annual event. We were astounded by the immense encouragement from the community and could not have done any of this without their support.

Thank you to Taylor Gas Co., J&M Service Center, St. Mary’s Square LLC, and our individual donors for also contributing to the success of this event!