Sidewalks for Crawford. W. Long

    Terrence Mathews

7/3/12

   

     Cars speeding up and down the road; sharp rocks and debris on both sides of the road. To many this sounds like a typical highway but, for me, this sounds like the road that students at Crawford. W. Long have to take every day.  There are not sidewalks that students can take to get to my middle school so they are forced to walk in the street and risk getting hit by a car. I do not believe that students should have to worry about things like this so I am going to make a change. I believe that the best type of community service that you can do is something that you are passionate about, and I am passionate about protecting the children in my neighborhood. That is why I have started an initiative called Side walk for Crawford. W. Long.

     My neighborhood is not a good neighborhood. There are drug dealers up and down the street. Police chases are a common thing in my neighborhood and when the police are trying to catch a criminal, the speed limit is nothing more than some numbers on a sign.  This only increases the danger that children going to Crawford. W. Long have to face. My sister and her friends have to walk to and from school everday. I feel like it is my objective to create a safer route instead of them having to walk in the street. It’s not only for the safety of my sister and her friends it will also increase the aesthetics of the area as well. I plan on raising awareness of the dangers these students face at Crawford. W. Long and ultimately get city officials to put in sidewalks.

 I started by asking programs that im in for help on ths project. The members of the talented tenth program actually agreed to partner with me on this project. The Talented Tenth is a prominent, non- profit organization dedicated to helping the inner city, less fortunate, African American youth of Atlanta strive for academic excellence, to have integrity and to become culturally enriched. We divided up task among different members of the organization. My just was to utilize social media to raise awareness about the situation, I have created a blog (http://terrencematt1.blogspot.com/) and well as a Facebook page(http://www.facebook.com/#!/SideWalksForCrawfordWLongMiddleSchool) to get the word out. It was also my duty to help create a video so that people could have a visual of how dangerous this street is. The video is going to be students actually walking to school and fast “real” what the video will do is show the students worries and that there aware of their risk of walking in the street. This video may come in handy trying to persuad people like the mayor that we need sidewalks in our neighborhood. I may also have to get petitions signed and constantly call the mayor, but whatever It takes my desire is to accomplish this goal. I look forward to getting those side walks and feeling really good inside.