This weekend on Oct. 5, Drexel University students will join residents of the Mantua neighborhood for “Clean, Green and Serene,” a community street cleanup. This event is being organized by local nonprofit Mantua Worldwide Community. It will kick off at 8:30 a.m. at the James L. Wright Recreation Center at 3331 Brandywine Street. The Triangle spoke with Mantua Worldwide founder and executive director Gweny Love. She is a lifelong Mantua resident with a deep devotion to her neighborhood as well as involved students.
“My motivation for starting Mantua Worldwide was to bring to our awareness that we all must act as agents of positive social change in order to create a just and sustainable world for ourselves and future generations,” Love said. She also acknowledges its pragmatic origin: “I am a native of Mantua, and I got tired of being surrounded by filth and the most abhorrent and despicable forms of refuse. One day, I asked myself, ‘Is this it? Is this how we will live indefinitely? Does anybody see this madness?… Will anyone do anything about this?’ Seeing myself as just the ‘girl next door’, I thought that perhaps if I asked neighbors to come out with a broom, we could make a difference. So, I scheduled a date for a cleanup and invited the neighbors on my block. They showed up. We cleaned up. And we kept meeting consistently for what has become Clean, Green, and Serene.”
Beyond cleaning up the streets, Love was driven to promote public health, sustainability and Mantua residents, formally establishing Mantua Worldwide in 2021.
“In the deepest core of my heart, my desire has been for university students, young professionals, and children to be able to live a life of freedom and acceptance with vast opportunities. I want the doors of opportunity to open wide for them, so that they can be free and feel confident that the world is theirs for the taking… [and] to be happy and confident that their knowledge and character are enough to take them wherever their imaginations want to go.”
In keeping with this, Love emphasizes that “Mantua Worldwide is focused on creating partnerships to make our global community healthy, beautiful and sustainable. To accomplish that, we formed Trailblazers, which is a network of university students and young professionals who are excelling in the STEM/STEAM arena with a focus on public health and environmental sustainability. The goal is to cultivate their leadership skills and position them in the forefront to maximize the green industry jobs and opportunities which include technology, business, and biomedical sciences. To that end, I am personally utilizing my platform to bring together a nucleus of future leaders and empower them so they can use their knowledge, enthusiasm, and passion to bring awareness to public health and environmental issues that could negatively impact our planet now and many years to come.”
Kacy Gao and Keira Earley are two Drexel students who connected with Mantua Worldwide through their involvement with Toxic Free Philly, an organization that seeks organic, herbicide-free solutions to land management. Toxic Free Philly Drexel is partnering with Mantua Worldwide for the event. Per Earley, “This is the first event us at Toxic Free Philly Drexel have been involved with, but other Drexel [organizations], such as SHARP (Sanitation Health Aid Relief Project) [and Drexel Sierra Club] have worked with [Love] in the past.”
As for Drexel TFP’s involvement, “…In addition to park beautification activities, students and community members can look forward to discussions around herbicide safety, organic turf care, relevant policies in our communities, as well as ways to get civically involved in these issues,” Gao added.
For those interested in participating in the cleanup, Love explains that the event is “a regular community cleanup effort that meets in the backyard playground and garden area of James Wright Playground. Before starting the cleanup, donuts and coffee are provided, as volunteers gather to meet and mingle. Then, we go out into the community sweeping, weeding, planting, and picking up trash. This upcoming cleanup will be more robust with some formal activities like guest speakers, a DJ, pizza, wings, sign-in tables, T-shirts, and a few tents. Some of the speakers include the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Toxic Free Philly, University City Green, and others.”
Love noted that Drexel students are especially welcome, as “Over the past three years that we’ve been hosting Clean Green & Serene… university students and young professionals have been the most consistent [presence,] more than any other group. I am looking to grow and have more student and young professional engagement. In addition, those who attend would be invited to become a part of our Trailblazers, who meet monthly in-person as much as possible. The Trailblazers’ meetings consist of social mixers or networking on the second Friday of each month during happy hour at local restaurants or other locations. The monthly meetings would include parties, special events, guest speakers, panel discussions, open mic, movie night, game night and more.”
For more information, Mantua Worldwide can be found online at mantuaworldwide.com, and Love can be reached via email at [email protected].