Volunteering with RISE Rockaway Beach

I have always loved the beach. I was born on the West Coast and currently living in the East Coast. It feels apart of me. It's a place that brings me serenity, peace, and happiness. Sadly it is the end of summer and one of my best friends and I decided we wanted to give back to the place we love so much. I found a non profit volunteer center, RISE at Rockaway Beach in Queens. They made it extremely easy to volunteer, you can either sign up via their website or send a email letting them know you are interested. They only do the clean ups once or twice a month during the warmer seasons and winter is pretty rare for clean ups. You can sign up for their emails to keep up with any dates or events they have! We arrived on the boardwalk around 10:30 am and was greeted by the kindest crew from RISE who did a small introduction and supplied us with gloves, a pick up stick (no idea what these are called LOL), a large trash bag, and a reusable RISE bag (Very cute!) Monika and I walked around the shores of Rockaway Beach for two hours and became shocked at how people treat our earth. Straws, bottles, tampons, cigarettes, plastic, food containers, shoes, and alcohol bottles spread everywhere among other things. At the end of the two hours we got a good workout in and also picked up 12.5 pounds of trash, just the two of us! I highly encourage you to check them out if you want to give back!

RISE Website: https://www.riserockaway.org/rise/

They will weigh your trash at the end. It makes you feel like you really did help. LOL at the little girl judging me from my excitement about our accomplishments.

Monika was kind enough to do the heavy lifting! LOL