Beautify America

TBOC supports the need to bring back pride to our streets and communities. The volume of trash in our intercity streets is just terrible Garbage is strewn across the sidewalks and kids have to wade through it just to play. People are walking by it and not even seeing it. We want to raise awareness of the importance of the little details of life like cleaning up your neighborhood leads to people caring about the children having a safe place to play and in general have a better quality of life. We want to encourage people to clean up their communities.

Beautify America is the brain child of Kevin Brister. Kevin leads the New Jersey Chapter of TBOC. Kevin shares, “I remember when my kids were in elementary school and I used to go out on a Saturday morning and clean up the streets of trash and broken glass around our house so my kids would have a safe, clean place to play. I hope my kids remember those days and learned something from me that they instill in their kids. I just don’t understand why people want to go outside their house and see garbage. My mother loved cleanliness. I guess that is where it started for me she had a rule that you had to pick up behind you. Just the other day I drove past Newark airport and there were new trees and mulch planted all down the center of the road. I thought it looked beautiful and it improves the quality of life for us all and that is why I want to Beautify America”.

Beautify America is a program that is focused on not only cleaning up our streets but beautifying them with new plants and bushes and then maintaining the new look. We work to change the behaviors of people towards “owning” the quality of life in their neighborhood not just “renting” it.

We partner with local businesses such as landscaping companies, apartment complexes, local co-op gardens, fire departments, and political representatives to form coalitions to support Beautify America events. For example, these gardens have people that know about planting and gardening. They work as mentors with the cleanup teams to teach them about how to take care of the land. We select a neighborhood and recruit volunteers. These volunteers either work at the event or can join the long term clean up teams that maintain the neighborhood after the initial clean up. See pictues below where we partnered into Comcast Cares Nationwide Program.