Video: Nowata volunteers paint murals, make town a little more beautiful
NOWATA, Okla. — A group of volunteers is making the town of Nowata more beautiful.
When students head back to Nowata Elementary next month, they’ll find some new touches. Bright and colorful murals decorate the small Green Country town, thanks to volunteers who FOX23 introduced in 2021.
“It’s just a little cleaner, a little safer, a little brighter, a little bit more pride,” said Nowata beautification volunteer Brenda Yirsa. “I think it’s really important. whenever I was teaching, I wanted to fix my room up and whenever I’d get it cleaned up they’d say oh it looks so good in here, you know, they do notice.”
Nowata beautification A group of volunteers is making the town of Nowata more beautiful. Volunteers paint, weed eat, plant flowers, lay mulch, pick up dirt and clean up sidewalks to help their community.
Last August, Yirsa, a retired a art teacher, and the Nowata beautification volunteers took FOX23 on a walking tour and showed how they are changing their town, by sprucing things up and adding art. At that point there were twenty murals. Now you’ll find about thirty in town.
In September when the Nowata football team kicks off the season, visitors will notice a fresh coat of paint on the bleachers, thanks to help from student council and national honor society students.
“We picked up trash and we painted some things. We painted some benches, we painted some railings, just anything that needed to be done, we did it,” Yirsa said.
Yirsa said they recently started work on a daycare building.
“We started the daycare yesterday and we probably have another couple of days on it,” said Yirsa. “They just said ‘something fun.’ They really didn’t care what, they just gave us that creative privilege to pick out whatever we wanted to do. It’s in pastels and it’s kind of cute.”
This fall, everyone who comes to the Nowata County Fair will enjoy a new mural at the fairgrounds. But it’s not just the big projects on the sides of buildings. You’ll see art everywhere, from the Nowata Ironmen logo on the basketball court in the south park, to the picnic table outside the Snocone Shack.
In the months when it’s too cold to paint, weed eat, plant flowers, lay mulch, pick up dirt and clean up sidewalks, they find other projects. This winter the volunteers worked in Yirsa’s garage, building selfie poles. You’ll find a dozen of them all over town, so you can pose in front of your favorite mural and snap a selfie.
Last spring, Nowata beautification volunteers, along with student council, national honors society students and other groups and community members, came together for the Great American Cleanup Day. The high school hosted tire recycling and Nowata Community Action Network did a prescription drug takeback. The bank offered document shredding, and Yirsa’s group picked up trash, limbs and debris, and put their magic touch on things.
Brenda says the committee meets to approve projects that must meet certain criteria. They don’t do residential work, and the project needs to be highly visible.
They run on grants and donations, and they know how to stretch a dollar. You can donate to them on their Facebook page.
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