Hickman Mills gets clean while teens get paid

By Eric Smith

The eve of Summer Break looms large, and along with it, so do the typical questions and responses from parents and children all over.

For generations, the long-held lament of ‘There’s nothing to do!’ from children amidst their summer breaks has echoed through decades.

Hickman Mills United Neighborhoods (HMUN), though, has a plan to do something about that longing question and help develop young people along the way through their neighborhood cleanup project, which just received $15,000 in grant money from the city of Kansas City.

“The Neighborhood Empowerment Initiative is for the youth to see what we actually have in our community, the assets that we have.” Said Keaunna Thompson, Co-Chair of HMUN. “With the children within the community, we want them to take pride in their neighborhood…when you’re walking around and cleaning your neighborhood, you get to get a sense of what we have.”

HMUN rolled the empowerment initiative program out in January and has been consistently cleaning neighborhoods in the Hickman Mills are every Saturday, so long as mother nature cooperates.

Usually lasting for around four hours, the youth who participate not only get to see the added value of having a clean area to call home, but it also comes with a financial incentive as well.

For their time, the kids make $15 per hour. Considering the minimum wage in Missouri is $13.75 per hour, and Kansas’ plummeting to $7.25, it’s an investment both in and for the neighborhood’s children, that bodes to pay well in its returns.

The program does more than just throw money at kids to do menial labor. Thompson and HMUN have weaved more than picking up trash and refuse into these cleanup excursions.

By bringing together a wide variety of kids, from an even more varied array of backgrounds, Thompson and HMUN are trying to build better, more accepting, open-minded individuals.

“Everyone isn’t a classmate,” Thompson said. “Some people are in private schools; some people are in public schools. They’re all giving each other advice, talking to each other and communicating with each other and sharing their life experiences.”

Thompson added that one of the goals of the program is the socialization experience of being surrounded by people from all walks of life, noting that the ever-present specter of Social Media – and its effects on social skill development – are both noted and challenging.

“Technology is a blessing and a curse,” Thompson said. “It’s about showing them that what you say can offend someone. Or, what you say, can uplift someone’s day for the rest of the day.

“I tell them ‘Say hello, good morning, and ask someone how they’re doing,’ every day because sometimes nobody has ever asked them ‘How are you?’”

These soft skills, ones that are becoming both necessary and increasingly attractive to employers, is part of the bigger picture for HMUN. For kids old enough to start looking for their first job, Thompson aids those students with helping them get that first job and opening the first of many doors that occupy the pathway to professional stability.

Now with additional funding keeping the program going, the one thing HMUN will also continue to need is places to clean up.

Thompson said the majority of recommendations so far have come from the monthly meetings at the Mid-Continent Public Library—Blue Ridge Branch on the last Monday of each month. However, those with recommendations can reach out via Facebook or through hmunited.org.

Treasure can be found among trash in more ways than just one. It may not be a diamond ring one of the kids picks up, but instead, a lesson that may be altogether more valuable:

Give back to your community, it will give back to you.

“They can help improve our neighborhood or be a part of the neighborhood and feel like ‘This is my home so let me take pride in what I do have,” Thompson said. “It’s teaching them about jobs, and school and the neighborhood…and what they can achieve.”