NEWBERRY — Some Keep America Beautiful affiliates like Keep Newberry County Beautiful are large enough to run on their own in the city they call home, but Newberry isn’t quite there — yet.
That hasn’t stopped Danielle Rowe, the woman in charge of keeping Newberry looking good, from doing her job, though.
Keep Newberry County Beautiful became a sub-affiliate of Palmetto Pride and Keep America Beautiful on May 10, 2012.
The Keep Newberry County Beautiful is a non-profit program under the Soil and Water Conservation District umbrella that receives its funding from grants and puts the money toward recycling and beautification programs.
In the year and a half since taking over the reins, the program has seen its efforts in the community make leaps toward a better Newberry. Local businesses have been getting involved in the events that Keep Newberry County Beautiful has been involved with.
One program partnered with Funds2org for a shoe drive that collected shoes that are sent to Florida to be refurbished and then spread throughout 13 countries that work with Funds2org. Those impoverished nations are being taught to set up businesses and taught to sell the shoes.
“It’s not just about giving shoes away,” she said. “It’s helping people bring in income too.”
Another program was Grinding of the Greens in January where Christmas trees were taken to Lowe’s Home Improvement, ground up by Newberry Electric and the mulch given away to those who wanted it.
Keep America Beautiful also puts on the Great American Clean Up, which allows sub-affiliates like Keep Newberry County Beautiful to develop their own unique program. This year Rowe is planning to do two — one in March with Whitmire and one in May with Newberry.
Since partnering with Adopt-a-Highway, Keep Newberry County Beautiful has been able to get supplies it couldn’t get before, which has helped broaden the scope of the Great American Clean Up efforts locally.
Rowe’s goal has been to do more for the city.
“Newberry has historical attractions. We can draw people in here by just beautifying it,” she said. “Put some money into it and it will grow. When visitors come, they will want to stay instead of checking into a hotel in Columbia or somewhere else.”
Keep Newberry County Beautiful also will do a book drive for the African Library Project and the school that collects the most books will receive tablets. In April, the city of Newberry plans to help raise awareness for Earth Day.
Whitmire, Prosperity and Mid-Carolina have each benefited from beautification put in place by Keep Newberry County Beautiful. In fact, Whitmire’s ABC garden is being worked on now.
“For each letter of the alphabet, you plant a plant that starts with that letter,” Rowe explained, adding she hopes to get more funding so the program can continue.
But it’s not just about gardening for Rowe. She shared the lesson she teaches about renewable and non-renewable resources when she speaks at schools:
“I take lentils and they represent renewable resources and kidney beans represent non-renewable. And I hide them all over the class before the kids come in,” she said. “I put the kids in different groups. One is my tree farmers and one is my coal miners. I send two from each group to collect all the trees that they can and all the coal that they can and then count them with their groups.
“While they count, I put out more renewable resources and repeat the process two or three more times,” she added. “The students notice that more trees (lentils) are out and less coal (kidney beans) and I explain that trees are renewable but coal isn’t.”
That hands-on experience, she said, will be remembered more than if they read it in a book.
Rowe said the experience so far has been humbling. Being one of the smaller affiliates takes a lot of work and Rowe said she is always looking for volunteers.
“The mayor of Newberry was walking by one day with khakis and a polo and he just grabbed a shovel and start going to town trying to plant flowers,” she said. “The City of Newberry has a lot to be proud of. The residents here will get involved more if there were more businesses that helped out. When they see that you care, then they start to care and they should take pride in that.”
In 2015, Keep America Beautiful and the Soil and Water Conservation District each gave one $500 scholarship to students. This year they will give out two each. The KAB Scholarship is for high school students active in the community and the SWCD scholarship is for students interested in agriculture.