Photo at left: A young volunteer from Allenbrooke Nursing Home, picks up litter near American Way Middle School. Photo at right: Volunteers from South Park Elementary clean trash along Getwell Road.     SRVS' Clean Memphis Project     Soggy scraps of cardboard, broken beer bottles, and old tires usually don’t bring a smile to one’s face, but it did on March 28, for residents and business owners along the Getwell Corridor. That’s because they were cleaning it up. In an unprecedented volunteer collaboration between the Getwell Business Community Group and Clean Memphis, approximately 100 volunteers cleaned a three-mile radius surrounding Getwell Road and Knight Arnold in an effort to take back their neighborhoods.  Even threatening clouds and sporadic rain showers could not stop the determined volunteers from picking up pounds of trash and debris. “The day turned out fabulously,” said Lynn Doyle, executive director of business development and marketing at Delta Medical Center. “It exceeded our expectations.” Helping their community is just what the Getwell Business Community Group and Clean Memphis had in mind when they organized the event.  Doyle is one of the community organizers of the Getwell Business Community Group, an alliance of businesses, non-profit organizations, churches and schools located in the Getwell area.  The members are on a mission to improve the economic livelihood of their communities as well as advance a greater sense of civic pride in the people who live in the adjoining neighborhoods.  Many showed up to help with the clean-up including representatives from Delta Medical Center, Shelby Residential & Vocational Services, Waste Management, On Assignment Ministries Church, Allenbrooke Nursing Home, South Park Elementary, American Way Middle School, Binghamton Neighborhood Group, Sierra Club, Keep Tennessee Beautiful, and students from the University of Memphis. Teams from these organizations were taken to various locations along Getwell Road thanks to the donated service of Park It Here shuttles and Memphis Police Department officers who protected the volunteers from traffic. Soon after everyone was in position, the rain came, but the volunteers were undeterred.  “It made it more fun,” said American Way Middle School Student Shaniqua Irby, 13, about working in the rain. “It was messy, but fun at the same time,” chimed in Cornaja Hamilton, 12, a fellow student and friend. “It was great, especially because we all worked together and for a good cause,” she added.   “The sense of community and energy just came through today,” said Janet Boscarino, director of Clean Memphis, which is a newly formed nonprofit that started in 2008 to help empower communities to take ownership of the areas in which they live. The organization is motivated by the belief that a cleaner city helps to reduce crime, promote a sense of pride, and cultivate economic prosperity.   “I’ve never seen a group of volunteers just keep on going,” said Boscarino.The volunteers managed to fill more than 500 trash bags in a time span of 3 hours.  They also gathered about 45 old tires, a broken bicycle, a stroller, and various unmentionables.  The heaps of garbage were then brought to a central location for the city of Memphis sanitation crews to pick up.  “That’s the grand thing about volunteers on any level,” stated Doyle. “Once they get going, you just can’t stop them. Their goal was to help, and that’s what they did.”