Central students clean up Fletcher Avenue

A group of Valley Stream Central High School students cleaned up Fletcher Avenue to help the environment last Friday.

About 20 students from the school’s EnviroCENTRAL club picked up trash along the street after school. Lead by advisors Kerri Guzzardo and Katie Anderson, students not only cleared the litter, but pushed a message to keep the village streets clean, chanting “Littering is bad” to onlookers.

“We are a close-knit community and kids really actually care,” said the club’s vice president, junior Daniel Ehatti. He joined club President Stephanie Fingh, Secretary Mitchell Casimir and Treasurer Rohan Motwani, along with other students, to clear away waste that accumulated from Central down to the corner of Fletcher and Merrick Road. Students also cleaned up across the street.

And this is not the first time that students have done this activity. For several years now, club members and other students have done clean-ups on Fletcher Avenue every fall and spring, according to Guzzardo. It is a great activity for them, she noted. “There are so many ideas regarding the environment to follow through on,” she said. “We want them to follow through on those ideas.”

Ehatti added that the members remain focused on helping the community. “Any individual may not be able to accomplish much, but as a group, we can accomplish much more,” he said. “We can’t change the world by ourselves, but need everyone to help us.”

About 35 students are part of the club, which meets once a week. The club is playfully referred to as a “C” club, because the advisors “see” the students every week. The club allows the students to do many environmentally-friendly activities, including rose planting and winterizing — preparing roses to withstand cold temperatures — in front of Central. In addition, the students also do Island Harvest food drives, and won first place last year.

What the club also gives is plenty of community service opportunities to the students, which makes the advisors proud. “We hope their intrigue rubs off on their peers,” Anderson said, “and they try to improve the climate here as far as making it environmentally-friendly.”