On Saturday, October 20th, I participated in the Fall Festival Beach Cleanup at La Jolla Shores in San Diego. The event was sponsored by The Unity Center, a spiritual center and philanthropic organization that my wife and I attend on Sundays and was held in order to help clean up our beaches and make our oceans safer for marine life.

The Unity Center regularly partners with other established philanthropic organizations to raise awareness and make a difference in the community through environmental education seminars, food and back pack drives, and International Philanthropic travel to places like Africa, Guatemala, and Peru.

For the beach cleanup, The Unity Center partnered with San Diego Coastkeeper, the country’s 15th Waterkeeper organization that formed in 1995. We had 37 people attend and even had a few beach goers that joined us when they found out what we were doing. San Diego Coastkeeper made the event super easy for us to run. They provided rubber gloves, biodegradable bags, and even trash pickers so we didn’t even have to bend over to pick up the trash. We ended up collecting 75 pounds of refuse in only 2 hours! The heaviest single bag was 11 pounds, and the most common thing that we picked up was various forms of small broken down plastic.

The experience was quite rewarding for all participants and was really an eye opening experience. I have found that being of service gives you time to reflect and think about what’s really important in life, and often times it inspires you to take positive action in your life. The event was fun for us and we would definitely do it again. San Diego Coastkeeper provides opportunities for you to participate in an already scheduled beach cleanup as a volunteer, and they also facilitate opportunities for you to lead a project sponsored by your organization.

If you’d like to learn more about these philanthropic organizations and potentially participate in any events at The Unity Center visit http://theunitycenter.net/web/classesevents.htm or with San Diego Coastkeeper, visit http://www.sdcoastkeeper.org/act/volunteer-in-san-diego.html