LIFT Editorial: Wren - Keeping Texarkana Beautiful

 

 

LIFT  Editorial
Allan Wren
Leadership Texarkana Class of 2016
March 8, 2016

Clean Neat Green and Pretty:
Keeping Texarkana Beautiful

Common ground is seldom sought and rarely found in today’s combative style of civil discourse, seen daily on TV.   Locally, finding common ground matters. Leadership Texarkana is reaching out to both sides of our border cities to contribute to the beautification commitment we all hope will lead to a more attractive community and to magnify the hard work by many groups already working tirelessly to make our community a better place to live and work.

For years, many committed local community leaders have worked to beautify the downtown and all points beyond. Texarkana, Arkansas, recently launched “Operation Facelift,” which provides recognition to people and business owners who agree to clean up their adjacent grounds. The City Beautiful Commission in Texarkana, AR and Keep Texarkana Beautiful in Texarkana, TX have brought volunteer manpower to each Texarkana city’s community beautification causes. They have accomplished amazing things over the years.

A group in this year’s class of Leadership Texarkana participants has also chosen to focus their efforts on beauty in our community, specifically by taking up the community “Call to Action” that Leadership Texarkana posed last spring, to encourage all citizens who care about beauty in our community to speak up, to say “We’re In” to keeping Texarkana clean, neat, green and pretty.  

Our goal for Leadership Texarkana is to use the “we’re in!” mantra to develop commitment to a common theme that could resonate and even catch fire in the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens to take pride in seeing clean green streets and neighborhoods.

By bringing awareness to all of our beautification warriors together who are “Adopting a Spot” – whether the spot is their own property or another’s that they are responsible for maintaining – the Leadership Texarkana class group hopes to multiply the effects of those efforts exponentially and encourage even more citizens to make Texarkana a more attractive place to live.

We believe there is power in a unified effort and a unified call to action, encompassing all citizens of our community – across the state line – to be “in”! – whether it is by signing on to the very robust city efforts on both sides or by just going public and declaring their commitment and resolve for keeping our community beautiful.  The goal is to make this a top of the mind and top priority for action by others.

By providing a vehicle for businesses and individuals to go public saying “We’re In,” the Leadership Texarkana class group hopes to initiate a tidal wave to pride that encourages folks everywhere to pick up trash when they see it and to encourage others to do so as well. The power in this effort springs from saying “WE’RE IN!”

Standing together and cleaning together, we can make our community a much better and more beautiful place to live.  We can also continue to take pride when visitors to our cities travel through.

Are you in?

 (For details on going public in declaring “We’re In,” go to LeadershipTexarkana.com/lift-community-challenge)

 

 

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