On Sunday, Central New York was part of a worldwide movement.
If you looked at Centerville Park in North Syracuse from the road, you’d see a sea of green vests under falling snowflakes.
The vests belong to members of The World Mission Society Church of God. Their latest mission is to clean up parks.
“A lot of people might not know just from walking by, they might think this is just something that’s happening in North Syracuse, but this is actually happening all around the whole entire world, which is really amazing,” member Ashley Gonzalez said.
The North Syracuse group started at Centerville Park off of South Bay Road, headed to Lonergan Park next, off South Main Street, and finished at Kennedy Park off Grove Street.
At the end of the cleaning and raking leaves, church members measured the distance of all three parks they cleaned because, worldwide, there’s a goal to clean the “circumference” of the Earth.
“It’s 25,000 miles if you measure the whole Earth so that’s why we’re trying to reach that goal so that we can say that we cleaned the whole world,” explained member Roxanne Libby.
The CNY group has some help, though. In 175 countries and 6,000 regions those green vests can be seen cleaning and measuring their local parks for their neighbors.
“I think that world is vacant of love sometimes,” added member Michael Miller. “So I think actions like these really speak loudly.”
Miller, Libby, Gonzalez, and their group finished their part of the cleanup on Sunday. Worldwide, though, branches have until December 3rd to clean. Then, they’ll know if they reached their 25,000 mile goal.
