Teaming up and picking up

The eye-catching signs, full of trash, can be seen throughout the main hallway. The purpose of these signs are to spread the message to clean up after yourself.

These signs were made by two seniors, Alex Grasso and Tatiana Hill, for an advanced marketing project.

In Advanced Marketing, also known as DECA, students were assigned a project. The project was to help out a local non-profit organization.

Grasso and Hill reached out to Keep Omaha Beautiful. Grasso and Hill partnered up with a few volunteers and helped the janitors do their jobs. For one day, Grasso and Hill took on the role of our school janitors.

“The janitors really appreciated their work and were really excited for them to help,” Allison Goodman, the head of DECA, said.
For their project Grasso and Hill teamed up with the local organization Keep Omaha Beautiful. A representative worked with them.
“Alex [Grasso] and I wanted to work with Keep Omaha Beautiful because we thought it would cool to work with an organization that works to keep our community beautiful,” Hill said.

Keep Omaha Beautiful helped out by giving them supplies, information and statistics on how much people actually litter. After that their project began.

During lunch, a majority of the students leave trash behind. For janitors, lunch is the biggest clean up job of their day.
On September 29th, Grasso and Hill let the janitors leave their work to them. They got to work and started by picking up all the trash and food that got left behind after each lunch.

“We had volunteers help us to pick up to try and show people how much they litter and how much the janitors really do for us,” Grasso said.

This work could not be done alone. Ms. Goodman’s fifth hour class helped Grasso and Hill.

“I really like their project. I think that anything that helps Millard North is cool. Also, I think that Alex and Tatiana are the perfect candidates because they are both really passionate about making Millard North better,” Goodman said.

In addition to cleaning up after lunch, they took on another part of janitor’s jobs. With the help of Senior Avery Daniel and a few others, Grasso and Tatiana picked up around the perimeter of the turf and around the perimeter of the school.

After their day of cleaning, Grasso and Hill learned of the large amount of trash that is left behind just by students. This fact helped them change their own ways.

“During my partner Tatiana and I’s project we did notice the amount of litter. This now influenced the amount we litter. We have both noticed that and we now feel really guilty when thinking about littering and we hope that we can influence other people in the community and school to think twice when about to litter,” Grasso said.

With this project changing their views, they worked to change the views of others. In order to spread awareness, Grasso and Hill planed to make posters displaying these statistics. For their medium, they used some of the trash that they collected.
“We hope that we can influence other people in the community and school to think twice before they litter,” Grasso said.
So far, Grasso’s and Hill’s efforts have paid off. Their signs are eye-catching and effective.

“The signs have been effective because people are talking about the trash on the signs and people have started to pick up after themselves and throw their trash away,” Hill said.

Grasso and Hill have worked to make a change their dedication and hard work combined lead to the results they were hoping for.
Their visuals caught the attention of many studnets and made students care more about keeping MN clean.

Overall, the effort, and the support lead to a large impact on the staff and students.