Would You Spend Your Saturdays Picking Up Trash in a Schoolyard?

Marleah Mullen of Wichita, Kan. did.

She even got other students to help her.

As a member of the student council and honor society, Marleah wanted to do something to improve her school’s appearance. “I am very proud of my school and wished others would be, too,” she says.

Still, would you spend your Saturdays picking up trash in your schoolyard? That takes a special kind of caring about the environment!

Marleah and her friends worked in the fall, spring and summer. In the fall they planted bulbs, trimmed trees and shrubs, pulled weeds and raked leaves. In the spring they painted the school’s basketball backboards and lines for hopscotch. In the summer they painted a huge mural in the school cafeteria.

It wasn’t always fun. “We had to deal with extreme cold and heat, major humidity and miserable dryness,” she recalls.

But it sure was worth it, she says.

For her efforts, Marleah was named a 2011 Prudential Financial Spirit of Community State Honoree.