 The Ready, Willing & Able Community Improvement Project is a street cleaning initiative. Dressed in bright blue uniforms with the American flag on the sleeve and the Ready, Willing & Able logo on the back, trainees work in crews with one Site Supervisor per crew. Their responsibilities include sweeping streets, collecting and bagging refuse, removing graffiti, cleaning street furniture, steam cleaning sidewalks and awnings and shoveling snow.
Since July 2000, The Doe Fund has significantly increased the areas covered by the Community Improvement Project, which provides the job opportunities that are at the core of our philosophy and the Ready, Willing & Able program. Not only have we secured contracts for cleaning areas in Manhattan, but in Brooklyn and Queens as well, generating visibility for The Doe Fund in new neighborhoods and increased community support for the program. Crews now maintain Hudson River Park in Manhattan, Forest Hills in Queens, and Court, Montague and Fulton Streets in Brooklyn. Ready, Willing & Able also has crews maintaining areas in Jersey City and most recently, Ready, Willing & Able Philadelphia crews are cleaning Fairmont Park. The Doe Fund continues to seek out contracts to clean more neighborhoods throughout New York City. The upcoming replication project in Bushwick will allow us to enlarge our work force.
Community residents and local businesses have responded with overwhelming enthusiasm to this project. With their support, the Community Improvement Project has expanded. In their work to improve the streets on which they once slept, the program's participants have done much to transform perceptions of the homeless as "lazy, unwilling and unable to work."
At the same time, the Community Improvement Project has been an important means of generating recognition and private support for Ready, Willing & Able.
Ready, Willing & Able crews have installed steel trash bins at various intersections. The bins are maintained by program crews and display the Ready, Willing & Able logo prominently along the side. The Doe Fund has received much praise from the local community regarding these bins and many requests to install them along the surrounding streets.
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