'Season of Service' Volunteers Give Little Rock Zoo A Makeover

This time last year, employees of the Little Rock Zoo were out in the community helping clean up neighborhood and schools. Now, their good deeds are paying off.

150 volunteers from two churches spent Saturday giving most of the 34-acre-grounds an overdue makeover.

"We only have one full time landscaper so we run on a lot of volunteers to help with the grounds," said J.J. Muehlhausen with the zoo. "So to have 150 out here mowing and trimming and raking and picking up any litter and washing trash cans and planting and mulching, it's just fabulous. We're so excited and so blessed."

Hundreds of projects like that are going on all across the region as part of the season of service which will lead into a big wrap up party called city fest the weekend of Octo. 24 in North Little Rock.

The three month period between July and October is being dedicated to tackling issues related to health, hunger and fixing blighted neighborhoods.

"It's really just to serve the community, reach out to them and say 'hey we love the community'," said Central Arkansas City Fest Director Levi Park. "Whether it's Little Rock, North Little Rock, Conway, Cabot, Benton, we love the community we're in. We're called to do this. We're called to serve."

Mark Evans is the senior pastor at the Rock Creek Church and was out with his congregation Saturday cleaning the zoo along with congregation members from St. Mark Church.

He says "The cities have embraced it. All the cities that are involved in central Arkansas have embraced it and are happy that we're frankly doing the things that we're doing."

Park is anticipating nearly 2000 different projects to be completed between the 225 groups of volunteers by the end of the service season. Because of limited resources, most of the volunteers brought their own tools and cleaning materials to the zoo clean up.

Organizers say they hope to send the message that little projects can and do really make big differences.

To find out more about the 'service season' projects or City Fest, visit www.cityfest.com