TI volunteers with Dallas City Council member Linda Koop (front row at left) after the Cottonwood Park Cleanup. Click here to watch the video.

Dallas-area TI employees celebrated Earth Week this year by participating in the 17th-annual Cottonwood Park Cleanup. The park, a half mile from TI’s Dallas campus, is a valuable asset for neighboring Dallas and Richardson communities. It is used by hundreds of students each year and is the site of several summer and after-school programs for at-risk children in the surrounding low-income neighborhood.

More than 40 TI employees, family and friends, along with residents and community leaders, took part in the cleanup, which was hosted by Keep Dallas Beautiful (KDB). Volunteers picked up trash and helped beautify the park. Dallas City Council member Linda Koop attended and thanked the TI volunteers.

Dallas City Council member Linda Koop said the park has made a dramatic transformation since the cleanup effort began 17 years ago.

“Today it looks absolutely beautiful, and truly it has to do with TI and their wonderful volunteers. If we didn’t have terrific business partners like TI, it would be really difficult for the city to keep up a polished image,” she said.

Alex Aguilar, an environmental specialist at TI and KDB board member who helped coordinate the event, said “this is the perfect event to get the whole family involved in community service while also helping provide a nice space for everyone in our community to enjoy.”

Before the annual cleanups began, dense vegetation and trash along the park's shaded creek made the area unsafe. With the help of TI, the neighborhood and local governments, the park was cleaned up and a nature trail was built.

Today, the Cottonwood Park nature trail features TI-built bilingual education-station markers, which are used by visiting school and Scout groups.

Watch the video.

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