During the week of June 2-10, groups of volunteers throughout the City of Scranton conducted cleanups and plantings for Scranton City Pride 2023, as part of National NeighborWorks Week. This event was organized jointly by NeighborWorks Northeastern PA, Scranton Tomorrow and United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania. This year, over 800 volunteers participated in projects all over the City!

We also debuted our first-annual West Scranton Garbage Olympics! We want to give a huge shoutout to all seven teams who participated this year for helping clean up West Side. Together, we made a difference with 38 volunteers, 91 volunteer hours, 70 bags of trash, and 1980 lbs of trash. Special thanks go to NEPA Junk Removal for picking up all the bags! Stay tuned for next year!

Block captains, selection committee members and program staff for our Beautiful Blocks program in Scranton and Carbondale recently convened for orientation meetings. The meetings aimed to prepare participating block captains for their roles and responsibilities in the program. These resident leaders will offer guidance and support to their neighbors during exterior improvement projects in this year's Beautiful Blocks program. The orientation sessions fostered a productive exchange of ideas and information among new and returning block captains, resulting in valuable suggestions for enhancing future cycles of Beautiful Blocks.

NeighborWorks is pleased to host an AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) team to the office for this summer, Willow 3. The team will be performing a summer of service from Monday, June 26 to Wednesday, August 2 and will be reducing blight, repairing homes, installing safety kits and improving public spaces. Be sure to say hello as they perform their service work over the summer! To learn more about AmeriCorps NCCC go to americorps.gov/nccc.