Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB) is hoping to raise its profile and drum up support for its anti-littering campaign in the coming months. To that end it has partnered with the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo (BAMZ), and beloved children’s character Kiesha the Clean Up Mermaid, to participate in this summer’s International Coastal Clean Up. Billed as the largest volunteer effort of its kind, the event will involve representatives from around the globe including Jamaica, Barbados, Greece, the United Kingdom, parts of South America and Bermuda. Kiesha will serve as the official local mascot for the September 15 phenomenon, while BAMZ and KBB will each play an active role.

KBB executive director Richard Lathan highlighted the importance of the event, saying it fell in perfectly with his organisation’s goal of spreading the message that litter is something we can all prevent.

“A large part of Bermuda is coastal shoreline,” said KBB executive director Richard Lathan. “Bermuda also has many ponds and marshes. Maintaining healthy and viable marine waters is vital to the environment. (They are) an essential resource to take care of. It is a great achievement to be part of the International Coastal Clean Up where volunteers across the globe are working towards the same goal at the same time.

“The irony, I guess, in my life is that one of the founders of KBB was my next door neighbour (Phyllis West-Harron). At the time I would see this lady going around picking up trash. She wasn’t a person who asked you anything, she said, ‘C’mon let’s go do this’. She insisted that you come along with her. And so there I am on this beach with this woman that I only know as my neighbour and picking up stuff — that was my introduction to KBB. I didn’t even understand why I was doing it. How perfect is that? But in cleaning it I recognised it was made better for when I came back. I took ownership of it because I cleaned it. That’s what happens when you get involved with a project. You begin to take ownership as you put some blood and sweat into it so when you go back you’re looking to make sure it’s clean. When you see other people being abusive, you want to point out to them, ‘Hey, I worked hard to clean that up’. That’s KBB’s mission.”

Organised by one of the world’s foremost advocates for healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems, the Ocean Conservancy, International Coastal Clean Up first took place in 1986. It has since seen thousands of volunteers from around the world clear more than 100 million pounds of trash from 170,000 miles of shorelines, rivers, lakes, and wetlands.

Bermuda’s 64 miles of coastline render the island an ideal candidate for such a cleanup according to Kiesha creator Daron Lowe. His series is sponsored by BAMZ, which deemed the books perfect accompaniments to the work it was doing to educate young people on the environment. The Kiesha series revolves around a Bermudian girl who enjoys swimming and has an appreciation for nature and dreams of being a mermaid while asleep. Adventures with creatures under the sea lead her to the realisation that people are not taking care of the ocean in the way they should.

“We’re thankful for Richard and KBB for inviting Kiesha to be a part of the marine cleanup day,” he said. “Kiesha’s message has been to help children and adults understand the importance of saving our environment, particularly our ocean environment, and this just seems like a hand and glove fit.

“We have the same message. Even though Kiesha is imaginary, her thoughts are very much what kids think — ‘If I were a mermaid, what would I see under our ocean?’ We have all the fantasy things that we talk about but unfortunately, some of the things they are seeing are old bike frames — things that have been dumped. We want to change that. So the message is very much a great fit.”It was his hope that Kiesha would serve as a role model where adults sometimes fail, added Pastor Lowe.“I think there are a lot of girls and boys that want to make a difference. Sometimes insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result — this is a different approach (to raising litter awareness) and I hope it’s an approach that will work. We’re a very small island and our organisations that have been working hard with regard to the message of saving our environment, can come together in this way. Hopefully as an island we can see it’s important that we join together and do those things.

“We talk about how our children should follow our example, (but) in some ways, God forbid that they follow some of the examples we’ve been setting. We have been really messing up our oceans.

“There’s a cute message in regard to what Kiesha brings to the table from a child’s perspective but also a serious message that together we need to come together to do something to make a difference. I have three kids. Sometimes they’re my best conscience. We’re very quick as adults with our double speak — say one thing and do something different. They remind me of some of my messages.”

Mr. Lathan agreed that having Kiesha as a mascot offered KBB an opportunity to leave a distinct impression on young people.

“When I was young I was in military school. One of the things I resented was that when we were out on exercises, we had to learn — even if you didn’t smoke — to fieldstrip a cigarette, which is basically to take it apart. You rip it apart, dig a hole with your finger and bury that ash and you cover it over because, technically, people could follow the trail of cigarette ashes. I have this big thing about cigarette butts from that perspective. Not only is it dirtying the environment but you’re burying it in the ground, it’s going to last forever. And if you don’t do that, somebody’s going to come and do something horrible to you.”

The message stayed with him forever.

“I see cigarette butts on the ground today and I’m upset. That’s important. That’s why we need a Kiesha. When I got in touch with the Aquarium, when I got in touch with Daron — what a perfect match as we move forward to this marine cleanup. I don’t know what we can do about cigarette butts (but) we have to seriously start to get the message into people’s heads and maybe the best way is through young people who, as Daron said, are the conscience of us all. Kiesha’s a great medium for helping us reach the young people.”

KBB was established as an arm of the Bermuda Garden Club in 1962 and became an independent organisation two years later. Once a well-known charity, in recent years it has been less prominent. The goal today is to recapture the enthusiasm of the past, Mr. Lathan said.

“Most organisations have an ebb and a flow, a high and a low,” he agreed. “Certainly KBB has had its high points and its low points. Susan Harvey, who was the executive director before me, has done an excellent job giving an organisation that was almost dead, a pulse again.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to raise the profile once again. There is a great desire within the charities’ community to work with each other. That’s what we hope to do throughout the year, but particularly around events like the International Coastal Clean Up when we can all focus on a particular goal, where the message is clear, the message is very simple and we all know what we need to do to accomplish that end. And with a medium like Kiesha, we can reach out to the young folks and hopefully to older folks as well.”

Dolphin Quest, the Bermuda Sub-Aqua Club and the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences have all lent their support to the cleanup. The hope is for the public to respond just as eagerly as, according to the executive director, it’s unknown just how much garbage sits in Bermuda’s waters.

“Just last week we did a clean up at Messina House. That project netted us seven full bicycle frames, one motorcycle frame, four (Segways), four bicycle engines — two of them still had oil and sludge in them — a thing that looked like a gas tank which had a liquid mixed with water in it, and a full rug.

“My point is, we don’t know what’s in the water around us. People have been tossing stuff in the water for years and we need to take it out. Ironically, we also need to be aware that the stuff has been in the water for so long that it’s also become someone’s home. We can’t just take things out that may have become part of the marine life. That’s why we called in the services of the Aquarium. We don’t just want to go in and yank out stuff that has been there so long that the environment around it has started to break it down and adapt to it. It’s a Catch-22 (situation) because as it’s breaking down, it’s putting toxins in the (sea) but the animal marine life is adapting to it and using what it can so there’s that balance.”

Mr. Lathan was named as executive director of KBB earlier this year, following his work as a parish constable for the island’s Western end. It was then, he said, that he became more aware of the work the charity was doing and the impact such work has on communities.

“I was the parish constable for Southampton onwards,” he explained. “We had several ‘hot spots’ in that area. As I mentioned, one of my philosophies is if you clean an area, you take ownership of the area. We had a few areas that people hung out in and would dump their trash and so forth. I contacted KBB and said I wanted to do a cleanup and they said, ‘Great’. We all agreed to do this one area in Somerset together and it turned out that it was a life-changing experience for many people who came out.

“Once it was clean they could see for the first time in a long time, what a nice area it was. The guys stopped hanging out there, the behaviours all around the area began to change and I began to think, ‘Hey, this KBB thing is very cool’. We kept in touch over the course of the next several months while I was still (a constable) and the synergy was great.”

His departure from the Service coincided with Ms Harvey’s resignation from KBB and the job became his, Mr. Lathan added.

“Our message is the same as it always was — litter awareness. At the end of the day we want you to be aware of the litter that exists and the litter that could exist if you just willy-nilly dropped that cigarette or threw that bottle. We’ve got to get people thinking about it, to get them aware of how their actions impact others.

“So our objective is to look for litter but our objective is also as an advocate for a cleaner, greener island. We’re fully supportive of the recycling effort that’s going on and do our best to support it. As for the future, we have in mind some campaigns to assist getting (recycling and anti-littering) into people’s consciousness.

“We’re looking at events that take place where maybe we’ll be able to assist by putting more trashcans in the area — a simple thing but a very important thing. Our idea is that we’re not going out to find sites for people to clean, although some people have given us feedback, but certainly we will empower people who have an area they think needs to be cleaned up — we’ll give them trash bags, offer them use of a truck, the best logistical support and, certainly, all the encouragement we can.

“If you live in a clean environment you feel better about your environment and the proof of that is, as I said before, when I was working as a policeman and we had areas that were severely affected by litter. When we cleaned those areas up, people’s behaviours in those areas really changed and that’s the message we’re trying to get (across) — if you clean your environment, you change your behaviour.”

For more information on the global International Coastal Clean Up visit www.oceanconservancy.org. Persons interested in becoming involved with KBB should send an e-mail, kbb@northrock.bm, or telephone, 295-5142.