Summer as Lake Street Ambassador changed my life

My name is Kao Nhia Lee and I am 16 years old. I have been working at the Lake Street Council as a Lake Street Ambassador during the summer of 2004. Lake Street Council sponsors a summer youth training job program that involves working on a project that cleans up the street.

On Monday, June 14, 2004, after completing an intensive selection process, the Lake Street Council selected a team called the Lake Street Ambassadors consisting of three guys and three girls. Because of turnover the job ended with five ambassadors. The names of our other team members were Jermain Bender, Rayshawn Love, Worknesh Regassa, Pahoua Yang and myself.

During the first week of work, I was amazed by how well the team and I were getting along. Greg Oats, our supervisor, was great because he was not too strict or too demanding, but he knew what it took to get the job done. Greg listened to the teams ideas and helped us deal with our problems. Greg was great at communicating with the crew. As for the team, everyone was comfortable at expressing who they were, and no one was afraid to speak up. Since I knew that I was going to spend most of the summer time with the team, I had a feeling that this job was going to be more than I expected. In other words full of surprises. Whatever was held in store for me, I was anxious to find out one way or the other.

Every weekday of the summer I would start work before 9 a.m. After spending a full day working out on Lake Street we always finished around 3 p.m. We were allowed half an hour for lunch and two breaks each day.

For the first day out on Lake Street, my initial reaction was surprising. I lived my entire life never knowing how important it was for the city streets to look and be clean. Ever since I started working on Lake Street, I began to really notice for the first time how trashy the streets were. It made me understand why the city streets needed more cleaning than ever.

Lake Street Council Executive Director Ted Muller once said, " If one window from a building is broken and is not repaired, soon many of the other windows will get broken." Another example Ted used was, "When individuals decide to litter in a given area, then other people will automatically do the same thing. The reason being that when an area has already been trashed, people are not aware of what the right thing is that they should be doing." Day in and day out this proved to be what we saw on the street. It’s easy to see why some people litter and feel as though it’s not important to keep the street cleaned up when it has already been littered.

Even though we did spend most of our workdays outdoors when the weather turned bad or it started to rain, we would work indoors at the new midtown Exchange Building (formally the Sears Building) across the street from U.S Bank. When there was nothing left for us to do at the warehouse, we would receive permission to leave work early and go home.

Another part of our job responsibility was to visit with businesses on Lake Street. We spoke with the business owners about who we were and what we were attempting to do. We then had them answer surveys prepared by the Lake Street Council, or distributed information to help keep them informed about what changes were going to happen on Lake Street. Talking to the business owners was a great experience because I hardly had a chance in my life to do anything like that until now.

Working for the Lake Street Council during the summer of 2004 gave me a clear perspective on what some of the positives and negatives were to living and working on Lake Street. One of the positives that I discovered was seeing how effective and caring many of the people on Lake Street were. When the business owners saw how hard the Lake Street Ambassadors were working to clean Lake Street, I could see where they made more of an effort to not litter and to help us keep Lake Street Clean. I also noticed how considerate many of the businesses were to our team members. We actually had some people help us pick up litter.

One time, a group of scavenger hunters stopped by and questioned us, the Lake Street Ambassadors, about the job we were doing. After listening to our supervisor Greg Oats give an explanation of our responsibilities, they wanted to help us clean up Lake Street. They borrowed our tools and started helping us clean the street. They only worked for about 10 minutes, but wanted to demonstrate their gratitude for what we were doing. They also gave us free sodas. I realized this job was even better then I originally expected.

Even though my main job was just to clean up Lake Street it turned out to be a lot of work! Our record for the most trash bags that we ever filled in just one day were about 26 large bags. The area that we covered on Lake Street ran from the Mississippi River on the east and all the way to Uptown on the west.

It was discouraging to discover just how trashy the streets can get after only a few days. Even though we cleaned up a given area of the Street once, we still had to go back to the same spot many times and clean the same area over again even when we had done it the day before. I also didn’t like how often the weather outdoors was warm and uncomfortable!

After about a month had gone by, the crew and I were heading out to the streets around 9:30 one morning, when we saw trash out there lying on the sidewalks in the same places where we had cleaned up only two days before. "Here we go again," I said to myself and continued to do my work. As the hours swept by, the temperature began to increase and the heat was cooking the streets. I began to sweat and felt dehydrated. I felt like I couldn’t stand the heat any longer and began to stop working. Then Greg Oats our supervisor made another good decision by telling the crew to take a 15-minute break because of the heat. We headed back towards U.S. Bank, our home base, to grab a cup of ice cold water. I felt relieved and cooled down after I had finished my drink. After the break was over, refreshed, we all went back to work.

Sometimes I feel frustrated and angry with the people who drop so much trash on the streets for us to pick up. I felt like I was cleaning up after my little brother's spilt milk! But somehow the anger that I had began to fade away! The cool water that I drank had calmed me down. Then I thought a lot deeper about the experience that I had been through. I thought about everyone and not just myself. I thought about who I was and what my role serving as a Lake Street Ambassador meant.

I realized that what really matters the most about this job was what I was getting accomplished. I was a part of a team that was making a huge difference on Lake Street. This thought made me feel better about myself and the job and I continued doing what was expected of me. I have continued working hard no matter how tired I became since I knew this was the right thing to do for the city and for the streets.

Thank you Lake Street Council and the City of Minneapolis for giving me this wonderful opportunity.