Q&A with Christian Mikell, Executive Director of Keep Douglas Beautiful
We’re thrilled to share more about one of our newest affiliates here in Georgia. Join us for a conversation about plogging, turning trash into fashion, and what it takes to truly get a community involved, from educating youth to gardening with senior citizens.
Tell us more about how you found your way to Keep Douglas Beautiful. Have you always been passionate about the environment?
I started with the city in 2019 as the grants administrator, and during my second year, the conversation about starting Keep Douglas Beautiful came up. I got to talking more about it, and in the end, our community development director pulled me in on some conversations and asked me to consider if it would be something I’d like to take on. This all happened during COVID, which was challenging, but I said yes, dove in, and started reaching out and trying to get volunteers. We became an official affiliate in February 2022, and since then, my passion for the environment has really grown. It’s always been important to me, but when you’re in a position like this, you become more and more aware of what’s going on in the local environment and in your community. The closest waterway we have here in Douglas is the Seventeen Mile Creek, which is outside the city limits, but we have little streams in our parks, and learning how litter can travel from these tributaries into our oceans really opened my eyes in particular. I also have a photography business, which takes me to a lot of the nooks and crannies of our area, and gives me an eye for detail. I’ll notice now if there’s litter across the way from where I’m shooting, and if places change or look different—a lot of our green spaces are improving, from what I’ve seen.
Why is it important to you to improve and beautify communities in Douglas?
The community pride piece is so big, especially when you think about beautification. It impacts our quality of life, and it also plays a part in economic development. It helps us attract more people to our town and keep them in our town. I was born and raised here, and I have two daughters—a 13 year old and an 18 month old. I started bringing both of them to our events, and at our first Great American Cleanup, I actually had my youngest in one of those backpack carriers as we picked up litter. My oldest really enjoys it—you can see a big difference in her getting outdoors, exercising, and moving around—and she takes pride in cleaning up our community. She said to me just a couple of weeks ago, “Mama, I really hope you’re doing this when I get older too,” because when she gets to high school, she gets to do community service hours. I’m glad she’s enjoying it enough to think that far down the road.
What have some of your favorite projects or events been so far?
My favorite projects definitely have to do with our school programming. We currently read books from the Waste in Place curriculum to pre-K and kindergarten students, and we teach third graders how to ‘recycle, reduce, and reuse’. In that same vein, we also created four Little Libraries in our local parks. I’m putting all of that under one umbrella, because I really enjoy that education piece and talking with our kids. It’s so important to start at that age and change behaviors before people reach thirty years old.
I also love our community garden. We help our senior citizens plant things like tomatoes, zucchinis, peppers and greens, and once they’ve grown we help them pick the vegetables and give them right back to them. We’ve started small with just this one garden, but this fall, we’re hopefully going to expand into the education system and plant more gardens with our fifth graders. We have some schools that are already interested, so I’m looking forward to planning more in August when everyone comes back to school.
Reading to pre-K students with Lily the Litterbug
That all sounds so fun! What else does your affiliate look forward to in the future? What further impact do you hope to see?
In addition to expanding our community gardens, we’re really hoping to grow our Great American Cleanup program and incorporate more mileage into it. That takes place in the spring, but we also have a fall plogging event that we started last year. We had 70 or 75 volunteers our very first time, some of whom had never even heard of plogging, so we were shocked and excited about that! It was a good experience and a great litter pickup, so we look forward to building on that tradition. Our local high school has what they call a Trash’ n Fashion Show—teenagers do stuff like make dresses out of chip bags—so we’re looking to partner with them and sponsor a model. We’re really excited about doing more with our local artist’s guild, actually. They do art shows twice a year, and a lot of people attend those events, so working with students to pick up litter and transform it into art, and having a display and raising awareness about who we are and what we’re doing, that’s all stuff that we’re looking forward to doing.
Any advice for people looking to make their communities cleaner, greener, or more beautiful?
Something that has definitely helped us make strides is building support within the community, whether that’s through sponsorships or volunteer hours. Make those connections, whether it’s through attending chamber meetings, or other events—whatever you can do to connect with people, just do it. Just take the time and have your face out there. If you’re new like us, it’s also important to start small and celebrate your successes. Make sure you give recognition to your sponsors, to your team, and especially your board. Ours is smaller than most, but we make sure to tell each other all the time that we’re doing a great job. That’s another important piece when you’re starting out—make sure to get those engaged board members and volunteers. It makes a huge difference, and it’s so much better than trying to take on everything by yourself.