Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful received a Keep America Beautiful Gold State Recognition Award during KAB’s recent 60th anniversary National Conference in Washington, D.C., distinguishing itself as an exemplary statewide affiliate organization. 

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful was honored for its outstanding promotion of KAB’s mission statewide and for its program support for local affiliates in Pennsylvania.

Keep America Beautiful’s annual National Conference brought together KAB affiliate leaders from across the country to share best practices and celebrate the successes of the past year.

The KAB State Recognition Awards recognizes statewide affiliates that have created new and innovative programs and partnerships that further their mission, while encouraging individuals to engage in activities that build and sustain vibrant communities.

“Keep America Beautiful’s State Recognition Awards recognizes our state affiliates that produce creative and resourceful programming for their citizens,” said Matt McKenna, president and CEO of Keep America Beautiful. “It’s my privilege to recognize Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful for the tremendous leadership they exhibited in their state during 2012.”

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful earned the Gold Award for its implementation of multiple community improvement programs, including the Great American Cleanup of PA.  All 67 counties in Pennsylvania were represented in the 2012 Great American Cleanup of PA.

There were 4,421 events with 141,264 volunteers. Volunteers collected 338,148 bags of trash or 6,762,960 pounds. They cleaned 13,589 miles of roads, railroad tracks, trails, waterways, and shorelines, and 14,046 acres of parks and/or wetlands.

Additionally, volunteers planted 22,511 trees, bulbs, and plants in an effort to keep Pennsylvania beautiful.

Registration for the 2013 Great American Cleanup of PA is going on now.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful was also pleased to sponsor 8 grant winners for their 2012 Fresh Paint Days Pennsylvania Program.  Designed to provide community groups with paint and painting supplies, the program enables these groups to renew a community structure in need into something beautiful through the application of fresh paint and a lot of elbow grease. 

This year’s event was held in partnership with support from BEHR and The Home Depot during the month of September to transform their structure utilizing up to 20 gallons of exterior paint and $75.00 in painting supplies. 

“These programs are vital resources to the constituents of Pennsylvania and we are honored to be given this national award from Keep America Beautiful for the work we are doing to make our communities clean and beautiful,” said Shannon Reiter, President of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful.

To learn more about how you can cleanup and keep your communities clean and beautiful, visit the Keep PA Beautiful website.

2/25/2013