HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Huntington City Beach looks better these
days thanks to more than 100 Mormon youths from the Garden Grove
California Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
__IMAGE1__The teenagers, from 14 to 18, got up early on a Saturday morning in July and
went to Huntington City Beach to work for several hours with the
Surfrider Foundation to clear the beach of trash.
The youths chose the service project at the suggestion of Marie Bowcut,
who is a Young Women leader. The cleanup was part of their yearly
three-day Youth Conference where the youths gathered to have fun
together, serve the community and be uplifted by each other and their
leaders.
The weekend began on a Friday afternoon at Huntington Beach State
Park with games, a boogie boarding contest, bonfires and dinner on the
beach.
On Saturday at 9 a.m., the youths gathered at Huntington City Beach
where they met up with Surfrider Foundation representatives, who are
the organizers of the beach cleanup.
Josh Morel, a youth who helped organize the youths who
attended the cleanup, said, "My favorite part of the conference was the
beach cleanup. I got to walk along the beach, and it was great exercise
as well. The Surfrider Foundation people were well organized for us.
They had bags and water for us ... I loved the beach cleanup."
"I really liked it ... It was a good experience because lots of beaches are dirty," said Tara Tolman,
a youth who helped plan the conference. "A lot of the trash we picked
up were cigarette butts — it was really disgusting, we don't want
little kids picking up those, and there was tons of that kind of
stuff." She said they also picked up a lot of pieces of foam cups, and
plastic from straws.
About 40 adults at any given time chaperoned the youths throughout
the week-end conference, and helped clean up the beach as well. Bowcut
said, "We can have a good time without the drugs and alcohol, and those
kinds of things that many kids feel like they have to have in order to
have a good time. I think it was a great success. I think everybody had
a really, really good time."