Gibson Center to team up with local churches for south-side cleanup initiative

Congregation members from Soulful Harvest Ministries and True Vine Ministries are teaming up with Gibson Recovery Center staff and clients to pick up trash and mow lawns in Cape Girardeau’s south side.

The volunteers will gather at 8 a.m. Oct. 26 at 1112 Linden St. before taking to the streets along West End Boulevard. Food will be provided afterward.

“We meet up every Saturday and we bring ideas together, and basically said, ‘enough is enough,’” Soulful Harvest Ministries pastor Scott Johnson said of the “Enough is Enough” project inception. “Hopefully, this will draw people together and show them the importance of impact of unity.”

Though it’s the first cleanup involving Gibson Recovery, Johnson said it will be Soulful Harvest and True Vine’s second cleanup with volunteers equipped with riding mowers, push mowers and grass trimmers.

Gibson Recovery Center peer supervisor Scott Moyers said when the Gibson Center heard about Johnson and True Vine Miniseries pastor Byron Bonner’s efforts in Cape Girardeau’s south side, “we immediately wanted to be a part of it.”

“It’s important for us at the Gibson Center to give back; we want to give back to this community that’s been so generous with us,” he said, adding nearly 50 individuals from the center are expected to participate.

Moyers said he also sees the event as a “teaching moment” for the center’s clients. A big part of recovery, he said, is giving back to the community and making amends.

Johnson said it’s time for the people in the community to “rise up and learn how to take care of their own communities.” He said the end goal is to eventually reach the whole city, “because if you just fix a problem on the south side, all it’s going to do is spread.”

He’s also requested assistance from the City of Cape Girardeau for help with contacting landlords who own abandoned buildings in south Cape Girardeau “with boards on the windows or weeds and grass growing up,” Johnson said.

“There’s so much division, hatred, murders going on, we’re just trying to bring a positive vibe to the city with various projects,” he said.

Since 1979, Cape Girardeau-based Gibson Recovery Center has been providing substance-use disorder services to Southeast Missouri. The center also has offices in Sikeston, Perryville, Charleston and Marble Hill, Missouri.

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