A Successful Polar Bear Pickup

Well, the weather folks vastly underestimated the River Kids karma...it was a simply amazing day.  The sun stayed out, the temp stayed up, and approximately 75 volunteers worked together over the course of the day to clean up a huge section of North Riverfront Park...Overall, the event was an absolute success.

Thank you to everyone who showed up!  Given our numbers and the amount of trash we were able to pickup, the Polar Bear Pickup has established itself as the 4th biggest annual cleanup in the entire St. Louis Region...an impressive accomplishment no doubt!

Special thanks to Kylar Kennedy and the Polar Bear Pickup Committee for their leadership on this project.  Without their vision and effort, it wouldn't have come together the way it did.

Take care!

Ben

Polar Bear Pickup This Weekend

This is a reminder to some of you and news to others.  The River Kids are hosting a winter river cleanup along the Mississippi River at North Riverfront Park THIS SATURDAY!  You'll find a flyer attached with more of the details.

I've added a few of you to this particular mailing in hopes that at the very least you will find what the River Kids are doing this weekend interesting. And at most, I'm hoping you might want to join in and bring a few friends.

If you do want to attend and eat lunch, please send an email to River Kids at riverkids@newcityschool.org to let them know how many folks you are bringing and how many will be eating lunch.  Catering is by Orlando's and Ces and Judy's.

Spread the word!

See some of you soon!

Ben Griffiths
River Kids

Polar Bear Pickup Poster

Here's the poster for the Polar Bear Pickup in digital form, please forward it to whomever you'd like...we'd love to get as many people out as possible!

FYI - Michelle Zignago (NCS parent) designed this poster for us...I said "something wintery" and she came up with this...she's amazing...thank her if  you know her!

Ben

A Word From The Webmaster

So I realize that the title is kind of cheesy, but I'm going with it because there's really not much to say in this post that isn't related to the River Kids website.

My name is Jack Biggs and I've been running the RK website for a while, maybe 2 or 3 years. This website has been a way to check out the River Kids goings-on without having to be subscribed to the RK mailing list. But Ben and I agreed that it could be way more than that. Looking at Google Analytics, our site has about an 80% bounce rate, because the site isn't as attractive as we'd like, and the only information that appears on the page is about us, and we assume that the average visitor actually knows who we are.

Ben and I have started thinking about a new web site: something that pops a bit more, something that includes our usual pictures and videos, and something that can attract users and not scare them away by bombarding them with unnecessary information. Mind you, we'll still keep this blog open in an "updates" tab, so you won't be amiss there. But hopefully, if all goes well, we should be seeing a new home page rolled out soon.

It's really cool to see how far River Kids has come. This organization started off in the 2003-2004 school year with a bunch of 4th graders, and, me being one of them, I don't think we ever thought that this idea would take off as much as it has. It's been a pleasure working with you all, and I want to say that this never could have worked out the way it did if it wasn't for the energy that all of you past and present River Kids contributed! Give yourselves a pat on the back!

See you all next meeting,

Jack

Polar Bear Pickup

The Polar Bear Pickup is fast becoming a bigger cleanup than we'd ever hoped for... At this point it appears we may have volunteers from Americorps, Grace Hill, MO Stream Teams, Trailnet, Confluence Greenways and more...

Great news - Lunch and drinks will be catered (as a donation) by Orlando's and Ces and Judy's in combination!  It's awesome that they have stepped up to help River Kids out!  And big thanks to Giovanna Cassilly for helping make this happen!

If you have the time to come join us for even a short amount of time at the cleanup, please consider it.  This kind of event winds up being very good for the rivers, first of all...but also very good for our reputation in the river world.  It's important that we show up in force!

And whether you can make it or not, please spread the word about the event to as many NCS families as you can.  Flyers will be going up in the halls this week and information will go out in parent letters, but as you know, word of mouth will get more people interested than anything.  This could be a VERY fun event for NCS as a whole!

May the river be with you!  See you soon,

Ben