Forrest City Unity in Action day mixes cleanup, kickball, and free food

Cleanup crews had the Forrest City Sports Complex busy at 2 p.m., and an hour later kickball took over, with free food turning Unity in Action day into more than a volunteer shift. The setup gave Forrest City residents two easy ways in: help clean up, or come for the game and stay for the social side of it.

The Forrest City Area Alumnae Chapter Community Service Committee put the day together as a combined cleanup and kickball event at the Forrest City Sports Complex in Forrest City, Arkansas. Sadie Blackwell was listed as the contact for vendor information, a detail that fits the event’s local, hands-on feel rather than a top-down city program.

The chapter behind it, the Forrest City Area Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., says it was chartered in April 1986 by twelve women and now includes more than 50 members. Its service area covers St. Francis, Cross, and Monroe counties, which makes the sports complex gathering part of a wider reach than one afternoon on one field.

The venue itself is built for this kind of crossover event. Also known as the Larry S. Bryant Wellness Center/Sports Complex, the site is supervised by Forrest City Parks & Recreation and includes an indoor walking track, a gymnasium, meeting rooms, and eight lighted fields for baseball, softball and soccer. That mix of indoor and outdoor space makes it an easy fit for a cleanup effort followed by kickball.

The chapter has also been active in other visible service work. In June, it awarded a $1,000 scholarship to Wynne High School senior Thy Truong for academic achievement and community service, extending the group’s footprint beyond recreation and into education. Forrest City itself has been pushing cleanup as a habit, too, promoting a separate community clean-up day for April 25 as a citywide effort to keep the community clean, safe and beautiful.