Yesterday, November 11, Keep Philadelphia Beautiful (a local branch of Keep America Beautiful) released its new Community Beautification Resource Guide. The guide includes everything from city and nonprofit resources to event planning tips.

The guide is designed for anyone that’s interested in spearheading a community beautification event — whether it’s a community-based organization or an individual that’s interested in holding a neighborhood cleanup. Michelle Feldman, director of Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, said part of the reason the guide was created was because she hadn’t seen anything else like it.

“I hadn’t seen this kind of toolkit published anywhere else, and so it seemed like the perfect way for us to assist individuals and community-based organizations,” she said.

The guidebook is broken down into two parts: steps for planning your event (before, during, and after an event) as well as city and nonprofit resources in Philadelphia, such as the Managing Director’s Office, the Water Department (city resources), the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and Fairmount Park Conservancy (nonprofit resources).

“The city has a lot of resources out there if you want to get involved in your neighborhood — make it cleaner, make it greener, make it better,” Feldman said. “If we can do our part in helping to spread the word about that, then we’ve done our job.”

The resource guide will be available on the Keep Philadelphia Beautiful website and the organization will also have printed copies available at events.

“[We] would really like to make the guide come to life through events that we host on our own,” Feldman said. She added that Keep Philadelphia Beautiful would like to hold an event to walk people through the guidebook and invite some of the organizations and city agencies in the guide to participate.

Feldman also said that Keep Philadelphia Beautiful intends to update the guide at least once a year, if not more.

“We want to make sure this doesn’t just live on our website,” she said. “It’s meant to be a living document.”

See the guide here. 

Image courtesy of Keep Philadelphia Beautiful.