By: Claire Tribble
We ended 2024 able to report great successes, and we are planning on 2025 being even better! The year 2024 brought us new opportunities to work with our community in many ways. We had amazing opportunities to work with students, volunteers, and businesses, and we are hoping to do even more in the new year. We have so many ideas, projects that are in various stages of completion that we can’t decide what our favorite new endeavor is. We had so many cleanups and volunteers, and we are very proud of the hard work that was put into Limestone County!
We are excited to begin a new educational program, hopefully starting in February. We will be offering a MOBILE PLANETARIUM that will travel to any and all schools in Limestone County for FREE! We will be focusing on environmental education movies with fun programs and games to go along with the movies. We are in the process of getting all the components and getting it started now. We are hoping for a February roll out for this project. We can’t wait to see the results of this new program.
In 2024, we were also lucky enough to be chosen (by students) from Athens Renaissance School to partner with them for community service. After a presentation to the ARS middle school students, we had five different groups chose to volunteer for litter cleanups. These kids worked hard to remove LARGE amounts of litter from different spots in Athens. After their hard work with us, they went on to create art pieces and projects to present to the community. There was such variety in the art projects they completed; it was quite eye-opening. We are hoping to work with them again this year, and more students as well.
Community involvement is our next goal! We are excited to be partnering with new businesses here in Limestone County for more litter cleanups, fundraisers, and more! Just a few weeks ago, we saw a local business reach out to Lukas Geiger to reward him for his hard work of removing tires from the Elk River. We hope to see more of this in the coming year. We are so proud of Lukas, a teenager from West Limestone, for taking such great initiative, and we were even more surprised to see a local business, JH Performance Lawn care, Maintenance & Pressure Washing reach out to him to reward him for his work. We hope that Lukas inspires more people (especially young people) to get involved with their local community and environment.
We have had such great luck with our local businesses taking an interest in Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful, and we hope that everyone is starting to realize how important a healthy environment is. As Limestone County continues to grow at a rapid pace, we are hopeful that community awareness and involvement grows rapidly as well! We hope that your 2024 was great, but hope your 2025 will be bigger and better!
By: Claire Tribble
Executive Director – Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful
January 3, 2025
