On Sept 12th hundreds of people showed up for my non profit’s annual river cleanup: the Clackamas River Cleanup! It’s a lot of planning and takes most of the summer working to pull it off. We Love Clean Rivers, my non profit, runs this clean up and is involved with a number of others.
The day dawned nicely. My responsibility is to bring my network of contacts in the Outdoor Industry into play – I get them to donate goods for the silent auction. It’s become the major fundraiser for the event. We’ve never had bad weather and this year was no different.
I need to get to the location at Barton Park on the Clackamas River early – to get everything set up.
The key volunteers get there and set up tables, registration, coffee for eye openers, and safety and pod organization. Lotsa luv amongst the volunteers!
The main group of river volunteers arrive about 9:00 a.m. They are organized into 15 pods, each pod covering a mile of the river.
The whole group gets a pep talk, then they divide into their pods, for safety talks, and then they set off to clean the river! 
Lots of fun is had both in finding treasures of trash and then later on back at Barton Park. There, we offer a catered bbq of organic beef and salmon! Plus we have live music and prizes plus the silent auction.
This year we got about 1,500 pounds of trash from the river!
Love was not limited to humans…there were plenty of canines around and they’re magnets for the kids!
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