More than a dozen local students celebrated Earth Day by cleaning up trash in and around North Delta’s Delview Park.
On Tuesday (April 22), the Delview Leos Club hosted its third annual cleanup of the park and nearby school grounds, collecting seven full garbage bags of litter.
“Our club likes to create environments where students and people from the community can come together to do good in the world. So we started in a target spot super close to our school, at this park, two years ago, and we’ve been increasing our area and numbers every year,” club founder and past-president Kookie Sethi, 15, told the Reporter.
Sethi started the club in 2022 when she was in Grade 8, following the example of service to the community set by her parents, both members of Lions International (Leos Clubs are the youth branch of the International Association of Lions Clubs).
“I decided to start a Leos Club because I wanted to get right into it as I grew up, and Lions helped me out. [Then] I thought, okay, what’s close to us and how can we start,” Sethi said.
“We all came together and were brainstorming ideas of how we can help the environment. We saw that there was a lot of stuff thrown away — especially by our student population — in Delview Park,” current club president and charter member Joshua Thoreson, 17, told the Reporter.
“Cleaning it up we saw so much change, we saw that we were able to collect so much, and we wanted to keep that going in future years.”
Last year’s cleanup saw 30 youths fill around 20 bags with garbage from Delview Park and the grounds of Delview Secondary, as teams of students competed to see who could collect the most and win a spring-themed gift basket — a friendly contest repeated this year.
Thoreson said the school’s administration and community members at the park have expressed their appreciation for the club’s efforts.
“I think the more that we do events like this, the more that we can create awareness about how we can help the environment,” he said.
“We just want to go good on this day, for the Earth,” added Sethi.
In addition to cleaning up the park, Delview Leos also host fundraisers throughout the year benefiting Lions charitable initiatives such as Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides and Canadian Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centre, make holiday cards for seniors in hospice care, take part in tree-planting in local parks, and collaborate with their parent Lions Club (Surrey Central) and affiliated Leo groups based out of Guildford Park, Earl Marriott, Fraser Heights and Kwantlen Park secondary schools in Surrey on community events like monthly spaghetti dinners at Tynehead Hall.
“But also our goal is to really build a community at Delview, and we do a lot of events to help students feel like they’re connected in their school,” Thoreson said.
“At the beginning of every year, we do a Grade 8 scavenger hunt where we meet with the Grade 8s, do a fun activity [to help them get to know the school] and then tell them about our club,” Sethi said.
“We do different community events with people to just create a sense of belonging and inclusion at our school,” Thoreson said.
— with a file from Tanmay Ahluwalia
