Beautify Fresno transforming city one community at a time

People in northwest Fresno came together this weekend to beautify their neighborhood one piece of trash at a time. This cleanup event is one of many taking place all over Fresno brought by the Beautify Fresno initiative started by Mayor Jerry Dyer.

“One of the biggest complaints that he got during the campaign was about the look of the city of Fresno on the highways, streets, alleys, parks, trails, neighborhoods, you name it. It was just entirely too much trash and graffiti,” said Mark Standriff, director of Beautify Fresno.

This movement has encouraged thousands of people to gather nearly every weekend to improve Fresno’s streets.
They want to show how much they care about the way their neighborhoods look not just for themselves but for people who are passing through.

Samuel Reyes is a Fresno State from Palmdale. He’s volunteering to beautify Fresno because it’s something he believes in and would do the same in his hometown.

“I think that there’s so much that needs to be done in order to uplift the community, and this is a big way of doing it, mainly because we have everyone from the neighborhood to come out and just help out make it look beautiful,” said Reyes.

The Fresno City Council voted to fund Beautify Fresno right after Jerry Dyer became mayor. Ninety percent of the cleanups take place south of Freeway 180 in neighborhoods that traditionally have been underserved and neglected.

Floritzel Garcia heard about this cleanup event and immediately signed up.

“I feel like if this keeps going and we keep continuing on doing it, things are going to be better throughout time, especially just not helping like clean, but also the way it affects people in the way that they live,” said Garcia.

The next cleanup is November 20 in the El Dorado Neighborhood.