The Rainier Beach Action Coalition (RBAC’s) engagement workers have been on the front line in making our community a beautiful, inviting and safe place to live, work and play.  The young adults on the engagement team, lead by Issac Robersone and Davon Fuller have trained and led the youth in countless litter and beautification projects throughout the past 12 months.  Cleanup efforts focus attention on main arterial streets such as Martin Luther King, Henderson, Rainier Avenue, Renton and Cloverdale.  In addition to weekly litter pickups the team has also engaged in several beautification projects along South Henderson.  These include planting several hundred daffodil bulbs at the Henderson Plaza garden beds and maintenance of tree pits and removal of blackberry vines blocking the sidewalks along Henderson Street. The latter provides for a safer sidewalk- free of blackberry thorns.

 

Conducting signature projects is one of the key achievements from the past year.   Such projects concentrate efforts on key sites in the community- and bring together youth, the team and other volunteers to make major beautification efforts.  While the team participated in many of these we will focus on three such projects that demonstrate ways in which they continue to beautify the community.

  • Early in 2023 RBAC partnered with the Mission Continues and Serve Ethiopia and 20 other volunteers to plant 200 native plants at Beer Sheva Park near the site of the new “beach” at Rainier Beach.  The team shared laughs, got dirty and cold and had an awesome time making the park even more beautiful.
  • In the spring the team made the Mapes Creek walkway its target.  The team focused on removing vegetation, branches that blocked site lines and even rebuilt the crushed rock path behind Safeway.  In fact the team wheel borrowed some 11 yards of rock along the path to make it safer, easier to walk on and more level. This event had some 60 plus volunteers working in unison, pulling weeds, removing litter and trash from the creek and maintaining three new benches along the walkway. 
  • The team partnered with the Kidney Center of Seattle in the fall to bring much needed maintenance to a public space at Renton Avenue and 44th south. The team tackled and dug and pulled and tore out dozens of blackberry bushes- often removing the entire root. They also trimmed and manicured the rose bushes on the site and then planted four dozen daffodils on the site. Just wait till spring to see the bulbs surface and show their beauty.

 

The above are just some of the ongoing projects that RBAC has completed with its partners, staff and volunteers over the past year. Staff are excited to be part of this work which enables us to make our community even more beautiful, inviting and a wonderful place to live. 

 

The above picture reflects the work in December on a cleanup from Rainier Ave South to 54th avenue.  The  cleanup was done by 4 people including Isaac Robersone and coach Vic Roberson with two volunteers. The cleanup responded to a request from the community that was emailed to the RBAC communications team.  Responding to customers requests is an important aspect of RBAC’s beautification of Rainier Beach

 

This was an earlier project. We fulfilled during either July or June 2023 in the space of an activation. The goal of this project was to make it so that the vegetation was more peeling around the area of LK and chief self Trail on Henderson Street. The goal of this project was that once we did the area was that also sustained within the activation space that we used..