The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

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June 13, 2009

Youth clean up this town

By Tom Davidson

SHENANGO VALLEY — Some of the blighted areas of the Shenango Valley got a face-lift Saturday as teams of people took to the streets of Farrell and Sharon to clean up.

They painted over graffiti that’s marred garage walls and vacant homes in the alleys off of Morrison and Florence streets in Sharon and spruced up the exterior of the old five-and-dime shell at Idaho Street and Wallis Avenue that’s been scarred for years.

“Our whole idea was to get rid of all that graffiti because it reflects on our community,” said Terry Harrison, an outreach specialist with the Neighborhood-Based Family Intervention Center.

Harrison trucked youngsters doing community service from site to site as they painted over scrawls that included gang signs.

“It went very well,” Harrison said of the cleanup, which was sponsored by a host of Shenango Valley civic organizations, including Sharon-Farrell Weed-and-Seed, Community Action Partnership, ERASE Anti-Drug Coalition, Keystone Community Support, Mercer County Juvenile Probation, along with church groups and civic-minded volunteers.

The hope is that folks will keep the movement going and stop the spread of graffiti and blight, Harrison said.

“Neighbors were happy,” he said.

Dan Dragiceviz of Community Action Partnership said what was accomplished Saturday built on a similar event last fall, when graffiti was first painted over.

Those areas have remained clean, so Dragiceviz said the progress made Saturday really made a dent in the Valley’s graffiti problems. “The amount of graffiti in Farrell and Sharon has gone down drastically,” he said.

Sixteen-year-old Farrell volunteer Halston Harper said pitching in was a “good experience.”

He said he helped “to make Farrell look like when it was a boom city.”

As part of the cleanup, Dumpsters were also available in Farrell and Sharon for residents of each city to place their refuse.

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