The Keep Oakland Beautiful board participated in the festivities at the 23rd Annual Fruitvale Día de Los Muertos Festival at the Fruitvale BART on November 4. Sponsored by The Unity Council, the event is a free, outdoor festival that draws over 80,000 people where they to enjoy live music, activities, traditional Latin American artisans, and artistic alter installations created by community members paying homage to los Muertos. 

Keep Oakland Beautiful board members set up a festive booth where community members could stop, learn a bit about our work, and have their photo taken with props and a festive background. Here are a few of our favorites! 

Our secretary, Leslie!

What a terrific way to meet the community, join in the fun, and get the word out about how we can all help keep our city clean and beautiful.

​Hope to see you next year!

On September 15, we rallied our volunteer troops with the mission of cleaning up Cesar Chavez Park in East Oakland. It was a beautiful day for cleaning up the park, and we made great progress! Take a look below at some of the before and after photos of the park.

Keep Oakland Beautiful board members and volunteers helped contribute to the clean up of about 20,000 pounds of trash from the city of Oakland. 
 
Check out this article by Rosa Tuiran Grobet in Oakland North.

Be the first to register your site! We are seeking site coordinators to lead cleaning and greening projects for the 23rd Annual Oakland Creek to Bay Day, Saturday, September 15th.  Oakland Creek to Bay Day is part of California and International Coastal Cleanup Day, the largest volunteer day in California and the world! 

Projects include litter removal, habitat restoration, urban greening, and beautification.  Many Creek to Bay Day projects occur in creeks and along shorelines, though off-water sites are equally important for protecting waterways,  as shown by this infographic. 

Lead a Creek to Bay Day project. As a site coordinator, you will have access to:

• Tools and Supplies  
• Debris pickup and/or debris bin service
• Logistical support
• Giveaways
• Publicity

Please click here to register (This form works best with Google Chrome.  Do not use Explorer.) 
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If you need registration assistance, please contact adoptaspot@oaklandnet.com, or call (510) 238-7611. 

Please register by Friday, August 17, 2018 to allow for adequate planning and promotion time, as well as availability of requested tools and City services.

Please mark your calendar for the Creek to Bay Day Site Coordinator Meeting on Wednesday, August 15, 2018 from 6-8 pm.

Not interested in being a site coordinator, but still want to volunteer?  Check oaklandcreektobay.org in late August to find information on a project to join.
Visit oaklandcreektobay.org for site registration, promotional information, and more.
Thank you for keeping Oakland beautiful – from Creek to Bay! 

If you've walked anywhere in Oakland, you've likely seen the ubiquitous trash can mosaics. There are more than 60 around the city, and Keep Oakland Beautiful has helped contribute to this effort through our small grants program. 

The program began as in 2010 to beautify Allendale Park in East Oakland, and has grown to other parts of the city. Volunteer artists Roberto Costa and Daud Abdullah lead the beautification effort early on and have designed trash cans on High Street, 35th Avenue to Seminary Avenue, Foothill Boulevard, Grand Avenue, and Telegraph. Beverly Shalom, Karen Diffrumolo, and Linda Vogel have also created beautiful works of art on trash cans throughout the city.

Costa wanted to bring mosaic trash cans to Oakland after seeing decorated trash cans while visiting Arcata, CA. Costa has also taught neighborhood groups to decorate the trash cans in their communities. Abdullah was quoted in the Oakland Tribune as saying, "I had done a lot of community cleanup projects, I liked the idea of making a trash can look so pretty that nobody could miss it." He has has decorated most of the mosaic trash cans, mostly in East Oakland with the themes of love and peace.

We have started to see some of the fruits of Oakland community members' planting throughout the city of Oakland! In November of 2017, we gave out 4700 daffodil bulbs and hundreds of packets of poppy seeds to more than 200 groups. 

Daffodils have been providing the opportunity for Oakland to beautify their neighborhoods and bring the joy of spring flowers to their neighborhoods every November for the past decade. Stay tuned for more stories about blooms in Oakland and our annual event in November!

Check out Keep Oakland Beautiful daffodils planted by Naomi Schiff, an Oakland community member, on the three traffic islands between Harrison St. and Oakland Ave.  and Orange St., Fairmount and 29th St. 

Naomi picked this location because she has been planting in this highly visible area between heavily-used roads for two decades. This area was once a building parcel, with two small stores on it, long ago in the days of streetcars and before the freeways. At one time the city maintained it as a  grass lawn, watered automatically and mowed. Some neighbors would kick a soccer ball around. Then came a drought in the 1980s and they stopped watering. When the grass died, people started using it as an informal car repair lot. Neighbors got tired of this and asked the city to do something. A landscape architect had a donated landscape design, which would have been wonderful to execute, but a city staffer left and never followed through.

Finally the city planted a few miscellaneous trees in a line down the middle (and a nice oak tree on a smaller traffic island). A neighbor added some trees that had outgrown his planting pots, and some roses. Naomi began planting drought-resistant plants, picking up trash, and keep up with pulling out the weeds.