Clean Team back in action and on the streets of Williams Lake

The Downtown Williams Lake Clean Team is back.

They hit the streets yesterday (Tuesday) picking up trash and cleaning up messes from the streets and parking lots.

Sherry Yonkman, Executive Director of Downtown Williams Lake said they have a crew of two workers plus a supervisor that go out into the downtown core three hours a day, four days a week, for eight months of the year.

Yonkman noted that the Clean Team started as a ten week pilot project back in August of 2024.

“Once we had statistics from that pilot project I could use that to apply for grants. This year we have a $20,000 grant from the Prince George and Region Prosperity Fund. That comes from the Province of BC but it’s administered through Prince George Community Foundation. We have a $10,000 Community Service Grant from the City of Williams Lake and we also have a generous donation from Enbridge, they have a community investment program and that’s a first time for us this year.”

Yonkman said the Clean Team is out and about from March into a little bit of November before the weather gets too cold and their efforts have been greatly appreciated by the community.

“The businesses have come out and thanked them and people out on the streets thank them. We’ve had cars pull over and thank them. Sometimes businesses owners will come out and offer them a cold drink or a hot coffee whatever is weather appropriate, people have been just lovely.”

Members that make up the Clean Team are referred by local Service Organizations.

“All of our workers are adults with a disability of some sort,” Yonkman said, “and that was one of the premises of one of the grants we’ve received. We are assisting people who would normally have a challenge trying to find work in an everyday work situation, this gives them the opportunity to work and it gives us to hire people to come out and do this job, it’s really a win-win.”

Yonkman added that last year alone the Clean Team picked up 214 industrial size bags of trash.

“And the biggest difference they’re making are the needles they pick up. Since we began they’ve picked up over 500 needles off the street. Those are needles that a child is not going to find or somebody’s not going to accidentally stick themselves with, they’re up, they’re gone.”