Adopt-a-Spot

The Kiwanis Club of Norfolk meets at Doumar’s Cones and Barbeque once per quarter to clean Monticello Avenue in Norfolk, between 21^st. Street and Virginia Beach Boulevard. The event provides great fellowship as well as an opportunity for us to give back to the community. Some of our best gatherings are with the Key Clubs we support as well as other members of the Kiwanis Family. This is a club favorite!

We usually meet early on Saturday morning (at 8am or so). As the restaurant’s hours change, we pivot back and forth between eating first and picking up trash first. Regardless of the order of events, there is plenty of time to have breakfast, socialize, clean the street, and still be ready for our individual days by 10am. 

You can tell that Friday nights are usually big on Monticello Avenue because the trash haul on Saturday morning is always significant. Our trash “trophies” have included whole cakes, car fenders, and mountains of glass bottles and cans.  We’re sure some of this languishes for the three-month period between cleanings, but we find things we just know have been freshly deposited the night before.

One of our favorite things about this event is there is no cost. Many of our community service activities require some type of cash outlay. Although we donate our time — holiday toys for school children, food we offer as service to the community, and garden supplies like mulch and flowers we might need for landscaping, are not free. On these Saturdays though, the City of Norfolk graciously supplies gloves, bags, and everything else we need to make cleaning our street sanitary and fun.