More Collaboration boosts Citywide Cleanup Success Share

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The City of Mar­i­on suc­cess­ful­ly held six City­wide Cleanups in 2025 – two more than last year – and fin­ished strong with huge help from out­side groups.

Approx­i­mate­ly 150 IWU stu­dents joined the City of Marion’s ​“Clean City 2.0” ini­tia­tive on Sat­ur­day in pick­ing up trash through­out Dis­trict 6 — the final dis­trict to receive free curb­side pick­up. Stu­dents showed up at 8am and walked all across Ward 6 — from 33^rd Street to 50^th Street, and the bypass to Adams Street — pick­ing up trash and help­ing neigh­bors move any heavy and bulky items to the curb. IWU Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Pas­tor Jonathan Alvara­do was grate­ful to help bring the uni­ver­si­ty togeth­er with neigh­bors and the City to clean up the com­mu­ni­ty. ​“The stu­dents of IWU are excit­ed to help out and serve, but often don’t know where to start. This col­lab­o­ra­tion with the City of Mar­i­on gave those stu­dents a per­fect first step which we hope will encour­age them to con­tin­ue to engage with our com­mu­ni­ty.” He empha­sized, ​“This is just the first of many part­ner­ships we hope to build with­in our com­mu­ni­ty to mobi­lize our stu­dents to live out the Gospel that we believe!”

At the Cen­tral Dropoff Loca­tion, the City received remark­able par­tic­i­pa­tion this year from the Grant Coun­ty Res­cue Mis­sion, Pin­na­cle Con­tract­ing Roof­ing Sid­ing, J & J Elec­tric of Indi­ana, Cen­tral Mid­west Car­pen­ters, and sev­er­al indi­vid­ual vol­un­teers who did most of the heavy lift­ing unload­ing vehi­cles to let City­wide Main­te­nance focus main­ly on curb­side pick­up and oper­at­ing the machin­ery at the Dropoff.

Spon­sor­ships through­out the year helped ease the costs of con­duct­ing City­wide Cleanups. Those gen­er­ous spon­sors were Star­bucks North Mar­i­on; Peer­less Print­ing & Office Sup­plies; Media Out­fit­ters, LLC; Book​the​Bash​.com; CF Build­ing Solu­tions; and Trust­ed Facil­i­ty Solu­tions in addi­tion to some indi­vid­ual in-kind contributors.

The active City of Mar­i­on Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tions par­tic­i­pat­ed and showed great sup­port through­out the year includ­ing through pro­mo­tions and in work­ing with asso­ci­at­ed groups such as Born Church, His­toric Mar­i­on, and the Grant Coun­ty Spe­cial Olympics. Vis­i­ble through­out Mar­i­on today, there was wide­spread par­tic­i­pa­tion from many more in the com­mu­ni­ty who may not have report­ed their efforts to the City, or who con­duct­ed out­side cleanup efforts aside from City­wide Cleanups. The City of Mar­i­on and all of its depart­ments thank the com­mu­ni­ty for their sup­port in mak­ing this year’s ini­tia­tive suc­cess­ful for an enhanced qual­i­fy of life for all.

An infor­ma­tion­al graph­ic will soon be shared to announce the col­lec­tive impact from the year.

For the full image gallery of the most recent City­wide Cleanup, please click here.