KALISPELL — It takes a village to keep a town clean, which is why members of the Flathead Warming Center and the Fresh Life Church joined together to pick up trash on the Parkline Trail in Kalispell.
Rock This City is put on once a year by the Fresh Life Church as a way to help the community with a week of volunteer work.
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For one of the days, the church teamed up with the Flathead Warming Center to clean up areas that had leftover trash from homeless encampments and walking traffic. Flathead Warming Center resource manager Sean O’Neill reflected on the impact of this team up.
“The cool part about this is it just really shows how different people can be and we can all be part of that same community,” O’Neill said. “Whether it's folks that are in a church group or folks that are in a shelter, you know we all have something in common, we wanna be a part of this community and a positive part of the community.”
One thing many of the volunteers did not expect was members of the homeless community joining in to help with the cleanup process.
For youth pastor Zach Martin, the experience of working with them offered him a new perspective.
“I think it definitely changed my view of what the situation is with the homelessness in the valley,” Martin said. “This bridge specifically, I've ridden my bike through it and I was not sure and now it's like kind of more awareness and like we're all in this together with the warming center and it's cool.”
The Flathead Warming Center hopes this new shared experience between them and all the volunteers will encourage more people to help those in need.
“We're all motivated to do something that's going to be helpful to our community,” O’Neil said. “Hopefully bring awareness to the fact that we have a need that we need to help our unsheltered homeless, and you know, maybe just blaming them for all the trash on the trail isn't exactly going to help anything.”
