The Bottom-Up Revolution
Instead of waiting for permission or a grand plan, Preston Ross III started picking up trash on his own block — and kept going. Learn how that simple habit evolved into a nonprofit, a workforce program for unhoused neighbors, and a practical playbook for taking action in your town.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Owens. Every week, I bring you conversations with ordinary people who are working to improve their communities in a bottom-up, organic fashion, and who embody the Strong Towns approach to strengthening their community, whether or not they've even heard of Strong Towns or are Strong Towns members.
One of the core parts of the Strong Towns approach, as you will know, is to start by noticing where your community is struggling, and then find one small thing you can do to address that challenge. Then repeat. Today's guest embodies this process really well, and I'm really looking forward to bringing this conversation to you today.
Originally from the south side of Chicago, Preston Ross the Third has a deep-rooted connection to Raleigh, North Carolina. He initially moved to Raleigh for college studies, and despite several moves, has always found his way back to the city. In 2020, he founded the Great Raleigh Cleanup, leveraging his background in teaching and his experiences abroad to foster community engagement and environmental stewardship. An avid sports enthusiast, Preston channels his passion for teamwork into his nonprofit work dedicated to building a cleaner, more connected community.
Preston, welcome to the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.
Thank you so much for having me, Tiffany. I'm so excited to be here.
I'm looking forward to capturing more of your story and sharing that with our audience. So to get things started, tell us your backstory a bit. As I mentioned in the introduction, you grew up in Chicago. How did you come to call Raleigh home?
Going into my junior year of high school back in Chicago, my mom had decided she had had enough of the cold, so she hightailed it and went to Raleigh. I wanted to finish school in Chicago. I wanted to finish up high school. Didn't really want to make that move. So once I did finish school, I was like, I need a change. It was time for me to get out of there, so I just followed my mom to Raleigh.
Spent some time studying here, like you said, before going back home to finish. But I've always found my way back to Raleigh even when I leave.
What makes it feel like home to you? I told you this when we were able to meet before the recording. I spent some time, part of my high school years in Raleigh and been away, looked at a lot of different places. Every time I go back, it's the trees that get me—the trees, the tall, really tall trees, and the smell of pine. But I don't know, it's just one of those little details that makes you feel like, well, plus, I have family there. But what do you think makes Raleigh unique and what, for you, has made it feel like home?
You're right about that. There are certain landmarks. There are the trees when you're driving down I-40 and they're aligning both sides. Then you finally see a Cookout sign or something, and it just makes it feel like, you know, I was a little younger than most when I left high school and moved down to Raleigh, so I still had a lot of growing up to do, a lot of maturing to do. Although I am born and raised on south side of Chicago, Raleigh had a lot to do with who I became as a person. So I have that connection, just like I do back home in Chicago. I have that same connection to Raleigh.
So you currently lead a nonprofit called the Great Raleigh Cleanup. Can you tell us the story behind how this nonprofit got started, and share with our audience what you all are doing? What are you working on?
To start the story on how it got started, it was never, ever supposed to be a nonprofit or anything like that. Honestly, transparently, all I did was go walk down the street and pick up trash with my dog while I walked him. I wanted to pick up litter, and I recognized that I couldn't do it by myself. So I said, I'm going to invite some people to do this with me. So I posted it to a social media site, and I had to call the group something, and I named it the Great Raleigh Cleanup.
Very quickly, not initially, not at our first event, but very quickly after that, a lot of people started showing up—like a lot. By the time we were holding our fifth event, I think we had 25 or 30 people. I was like, where are all these people coming from? Who are they? How can I find this? That's ultimately when it became a nonprofit. But there was a niche here in Raleigh. There was a need here in Raleigh. Even though it was COVID and Raleigh was growing, there was a lot of litter everywhere, so we struck lightning in a bottle with that and really, really blew up.
Looking back, do you feel like there was a person or an experience or a memory or anything that kind of influenced the fact that you would see litter and decide, I can go pick that up? I feel like we might all see something in our communities that's not quite right, but very few people will actually say, Hey, I'm actually going to do something about this. As you reflect, what do you think got you to the point where you didn't just walk by? You actually said, I can do something about this, even though you weren't planning to make it a thing, even at a personal level?
Well, I think it's because I envision myself an environmentalist. In a perfect world, I would have solar panels on my home. I'd be growing my own food, all of these things. I'd have no plastic in my house. Those things—that's a lot to take on, a lot of education to gather. I was like, what's one of the ways that I can help the environment that doesn't require all that? And I was like, I could pick up trash. Who doesn't know how to pick up trash? You walk around, you put it in a bucket. I've learned a lot about the process since I began, but it really was just, hey, I need to be doing something.
That's one of the things about me—I feel like whoever you are, you should be doing something for society, for the world, for whatever. Not picking up trash. I know everybody's not going to do that, but you should be doing something always. Go back to the quote by Shirley Chisholm that says service is the rent we pay for space on this earth. Picking up litter is my rent that I'm paying.
Walk us through some of those first events again. How did you pick where to clean up? Who was coming out to pick up with you? Any fun memories from those early days, or what surprised you about who was coming out?
Well, at the time when I began it, I was married, so the first event was just my wife and I. Although someone else had said that they would show up, they signed up. I learned very quickly that when people say they're going to volunteer for something, they don't always do it. So I learned that very quickly. That was the first event.
The second event, two friends and a random person showed up. So there were five of us, and that was really cool. Like I said, by that fourth event, there were 10 people there who I'd never met before. I hadn't done any promotion or marketing. I was just like, how do you people even know who we are? Why are you here? Where'd you come from? The funny thing about that fourth event, there are probably three or four people from that event who I had not met prior who are lifelong friends now.
So how were they hearing about it? Was it just word of mouth?
Well, we use the platform meetup.com. If anybody's familiar with it, you just type in what you're interested in in your area, and it'll give you options. Like I said, there were not a lot of options for litter cleanups in the Raleigh area. A lot of that is because of COVID. The city had slowed down, the state had slowed down. But that's an ideal time for a nonprofit to just kick the door in, or a community organization. That's what we did. So they all found us initially through Meetup. Ultimately, people ended up finding us through word of mouth and through Instagram and other channels. But initially it was all Meetup. To this day, it's still a lot of people find us just searching on Meetup.
So how long were these pickup events? Are they two hours? How did you pick where to go?
Everything is usually two hours. Started back then, it was two hours. Today, it's two hours. I can usually kind of tell, as enthusiastic as people are, I could kind of get—I'm very good at understanding, okay, they're about done mentally, physically, they're about done.
As far as picking our location back then, still a bit to this day, I get first dibs. If I see an area and I think it needs to be cleaned up, I get that. Now I have partnerships with different organizations, with the municipalities, the City of Raleigh, that they get to put some requests through. But my favorite thing to do is respond to a resident request. If you live in Northwest Raleigh and you're like, hey, it's really littered over here, any chance you guys can help? My favorite thing to do is not even respond to that email, but three or four days later, just send you before and after pictures. Like, done. We're out of there.
Love that. So we've kind of touched on this already, but can you talk about when you were like, wait, this is something more than a hobby. This is an actual nonprofit. What were you doing professionally at the time, what was your background, and when you were making that decision to formalize as a nonprofit, what was that process like?
So at the time that Great Raleigh Cleanup really kicked off, I was an insurance claims adjuster. So I was the guy that would drive around the city and look at vehicles that had been involved in car wrecks. So that job allowed me to see a lot of Raleigh. I'm just driving through Raleigh all day, and I'm just looking around like, dang man, it really didn't use to be so much litter in these areas. So that's what I noticed.
Two of my best friends run a nonprofit called The Gifted Arts, and they had been running it probably 10 years before Great Raleigh Cleanup started. When we started getting some momentum, I'll never forget, I was talking to him. I was like, guys, I'm doing this thing. It's really cool, but it's costing me a lot of money. My buddy CJ said, it sounds like you have a nonprofit. I'll never forget those exact words that he said—it sounds like you have a nonprofit.
So a few days later, I went and registered us with the state through some hiccups. I registered us with the IRS. I remember it was December 12th of 2021, we got our tax letter from the IRS, and we were a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. That was a pretty momentous day.
So what did that mean for you? Did that mean you stepped away from your work, or how did you find that balance?
So I kept running Great—I started running Great Raleigh Cleanup. It was becoming more and more time-consuming while I was doing the insurance thing. Although I really enjoyed the insurance job, I knew it was time for a change, so I left that. In a much, much prior life, I had been a Spanish teacher. So I found a job teaching Spanish part-time, and I was able to do that while I was able to grow the Great Raleigh Cleanup.
Can I tell you the funny story about how I found the Spanish show?
Please do.
So I was—we host a lot of schools, we host a lot of businesses or whatever. So I had a school out one day, and they were walking around cleaning up litter, and I went to one of the ladies who was in charge, and I was like, hey, you guys having a good time? She was like, yeah. I was like, that's cool. Hey, let me know if your school needs a part-time Spanish teacher.
Her response to me was, we do, because I'm transitioning into another job. So I was like, it was kind of shared. But just the way that happened—talking to the Spanish teacher who was taking another role within the school, and I was able to step in and take over—that was just really fortunate.
What was it like for you processing, oh, wow, this is a new direction? I didn't really see myself going this professionally.
When I came out of college, I was a teacher. I never saw myself being a teacher. Three years after teaching in Raleigh, or in Garner, actually, I ended up teaching overseas. I didn't see that happening. I came back and did the insurance thing. I didn't see that happening. That insurance job sent me to Ohio for a few years. Didn't see it. So I'm used to just kind of staying ready so you don't have to get ready.
Life is going to take you in a lot of different directions. You've just got to be able to roll with the punches. Running Great Raleigh Cleanup was just kind of—I'm fortunate to land in this space. There are a lot of other things I could have been doing. I could have had another job that I would have loved, or I could have been miserable, but this is what was bestowed upon me. I'm just riding the wave. I've been riding—we're about five and a half, six years in October. You never know what life holds for you. So I'm just going to enjoy this as much as I can, do as much good as I can, for as long as I can. Once that time is up and it's for me to do something else, just roll with that.
What would you say has been your biggest challenge?
Well, we are a nonprofit, so in some circumstances, it has been funding. We've grown a lot. I'm ready to take another step, a really big step. So we are actively seeking that big dollar amount that can allow us to hire some more folks and make more impact.
But just with running—I think running a business, with life, with running a nonprofit, whatever—obstacles just come up that you don't expect. You hop over it, you deal with it as best you can. We obviously have our personal lives and things of that nature, so you have to deal with that while continuing to run the business.
As far as Great Raleigh Cleanup goes, it's just me being impatient. I think my biggest challenge is just impatience. When I'm patient, good things happen. When I continue to do the good work, be transparent about it, try to tell a good story, good things happen. I just need to remain patient and continue on that journey.
So is most of the work organizing? Is it mostly logistics? Can you walk us through how is it structured now? Are there multiple teams that you kind of rotate around, or is it just the same one big group every day, a specific day and time, and you kind of figure out where that group goes? How do you actually structure this? And do you have an idea of how many people are involved now?
I'm going to give you a four-day span to kind of explain how Great Raleigh Cleanup works. If I hadn't explained this—in addition to our volunteer work, our biggest program is called Workforce. It's a partnership with the City of Raleigh and some other funders to offer employment opportunities to folks experiencing homelessness. So that's our big program. That's my Monday through Friday.
So on Thursday, I had a Workforce cleanup. I went out with four folks. I can't remember where we went, but we did a litter cleanup. Friday, I had a corporate volunteering event. It was a local real estate company, so I took them out. They did a litter cleanup. Saturday morning, I had a kids cleanup. So we had a bunch of kids and parents on the Greenway cleaning up litter. Sunday afternoon, for International Women's Day, we had our women-only cleanup in partnership with a local business here called Heartwell. So that was another cleanup.
So when you asked, is it the same people? Never the same people, always somebody new. I think in that four-day span, we had 23 new volunteers, and we had probably 40 who were returning volunteers. We had a corporate event, we had a Workforce event, we had a kids. So we covered a lot of the bases when it comes to litter cleanups and how we do things.
When we started the Workforce, because it is during the week, it takes up probably a majority of the time—responding to requests and city requests and doing invoicing and all of that kind of stuff. But ultimately, we've got to get boots on the ground, get out and clean up litter. So it's just bouncing around doing a whole bunch of stuff.
So it sounds like partnership is really critical to your work. Can you speak to the importance of finding and building partnerships?
Partnership is everything to me. I'm telling you, just how important it is to me. I don't even like to post on social media about anything without some sort of collaborative partner, either collaborating on the post or mentioned. I hate to just say, yeah, Great Raleigh Cleanup did it. No, Great Raleigh Cleanup and such and such are doing this or did this or made this happen.
Partnership is everything. It's been all about the growth of Great Raleigh Cleanup. It's through partnerships, and we have so many now. It is so important and vital to me that we wouldn't be where we are without partners. Partners are going to be the reason that we take the next step and shoot to the moon and all of those things. Partnership is everything with me.
To me, it sounds like a pivot. Maybe you don't think of it as a pivot, but it sounds like, hey, we're putting this event on Meetup. Anyone can come out. Then when you're describing what you just described, it's a more partnership-oriented structure, where we have this business wanting to do this, we have this group wanting to do this. How did that happen? Or do you still do that just general, show up on a Saturday morning and help us out? I'm just curious how you found that structure of partnering with different businesses or organizations or even the city and then taking their group out to do this thing. Can you walk me through that?
It all starts with reaching out to the community, opening its door for the community. Company X, Fortune 500 Company—I likely won't have a conversation with their CEO, but I might have a conversation with somebody on their green team who's a local Raleigh resident. So that Raleigh resident comes and volunteers with me, and then says, hey, I want to bring my company into the mix so we can do a volunteer day. So then they reach out on behalf of their company, so we already have that personal relationship of them as a volunteer.
Then in most cases, like the event I did on Friday where I told you I led the real estate company, I just know one of the guys who was the leader of that company. I know him and his wife and his two kids, just through community work. So all of those partnerships and connections are made at the individual level, and then they blossom into community work. Occasionally, some company will hear about us that didn't have any kind of interaction with us prior and try to set something up. But in most cases, it starts at that individual level, building that relationship.
What do you find motivates people to want to go out and pick up trash? What are you hearing?
Everybody wants something different. For some people, and for me in the beginning, it was therapy. It's literally just therapy, just a chance to get away. I talk about the fact that we work with a lot of unhoused people through our Workforce program. But what I found is housed or unhoused, people need connection. You can live in a very expensive house in a great neighborhood and have nobody to talk to, and Great Raleigh Cleanup offers that. That's big to me. More than how much trash we pick up is how much community we build. That's super important to me.
Some people do just want to make their neighborhood look better. So they want to come out, and this is their opportunity to move. Maybe they don't have an opportunity to move around. There are so many—if I have 40 volunteers, I could have 10 or 12 different reasons that they're there that day.
I think it's obvious that people want to feel like they have a chance to actually contribute to their community in some tangible way and make it better.
I would say one of the benefits of the Great Raleigh Cleanup and the work we do is the immediate impact. There are so many worthy causes and people doing a lot of things, but it just takes time. Great Raleigh Cleanup, you come out, give us two hours—night and day difference.
That's connected to what I was going to say, because I feel like we see struggles in our community, right? But I think more often than not, we feel overwhelmed with what do we do about that? I don't even know where to start with that. So actually, there's a lot of latent interest and energy that wants to be poured into the community. But often it just feels too complicated, or they don't know where to get the information, or they don't want to do it by themselves.
Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, kind of stepping away from the specific topic of specifically picking up trash. What have you learned about taking action or just getting out there and being part of the community in this way?
You're right that I think a lot of people want to do good, just don't know how to do good. Where we are in this day and age, hop on Google. You can pretty much search ways to get involved. There aren't many causes where someone isn't at least trying, even if it's on-the-ground, roots level, even if it's super small. Someone's already trying, because there are some people who are just built to get out there and do it. They just need the community behind them.
If you don't want to be that person, you don't have to be that person. If you can't find that already-built organization and that already-built movement for you to hop into, do it. Whatever you're passionate about, do it as small as you can, as little as you can to begin. If it's genuine, and if it's transparent, and if it's pure, it naturally will blossom. It will grow into something you probably didn't expect it to grow into.
So look for it already, because a lot of times, especially I can speak to Raleigh, it probably exists. If it doesn't, you do it as small as you feel comfortable, doing it as often as you feel comfortable. If that's one time, that's one good time.
I love that. I've said, you can be a champion, or you can help a champion. If you want to get out, find someone already doing it and just jump on their team, right? If you can't find a champion who's doing what you want to do, like you said, find one small thing.
You've mentioned the word transparent a lot. Transparency. Can you share about that and why is it so important to your work?
I just—it's just—I want everyone to know. It's still weird to me. We've been doing this six and a half years, raised tons of money, but when people give me money, I'm like, I need to make sure that they know that this money is going to something good. So it's just important to me that I never want anybody to pop up six years from now like, oh, well, he did this with his money. He didn't pick up litter. I'm like, no, this is what we do. This is how we do it. First of all, we're a nonprofit, so you can pretty much look at anything we got. But it's just important to me, because I've seen in history we've seen so many things we thought were good fail because they weren't transparent, and they weren't necessarily doing everything above board.
It's just important to me, especially being somewhat of a one-man show, that people know that Preston is above board, doing his best, making the right decisions as often as he can with the hard-earned money that you have decided to give. I want to make sure that you know it's going to a worthy cause. I'm going to show you something for that.
So one of the key Strong Towns ideas is this idea of incrementalism, or this idea of start small and pivot as you learn from feedback, right? As you learn from success and you learn from mistakes. Can you reflect on the past six or so years? I'm just curious if anything stands out to you. A time when you tried something and learned from it, either for good or realized, oh, that wasn't the best idea. Or maybe when you felt like it was time to make a pivot and how you approached how you were doing your work.
What is this idea of incrementalism? I mean, I feel like your whole story is a case study in incrementalism, right? You literally go outside and just pick up trash, and then it goes into this movement for change. But I'd just love to hear it in your words. What has this looked like for you, and what has it been like to go through a process that is truly emergent, right? It's not like you sat down at your kitchen table and said, I feel like I need to start a nonprofit. What could I do? You were like, no, I think I can pick up trash. Now you're like, whoa, we have a nonprofit. Where did that come from? So take that where you would like to take it. But I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that.
Well, I think every day, every day I go out, whatever I'm doing, whatever program we're participating in, I'm learning, and I'm taking something away from that. Just because I've been doing it this way for five and a half years does not mean I'm going to continue to do it this way.
Also, I think I learned that even though we're pretty good at what we do, sometimes you could bite off more than you could chew, and I need to be cognizant of that. Occasionally I might have to say, hey, I just I can't do an event two days in a row. I need to look out for myself. I need to look out for my sanity, my health. Two events in one day, I remember we used to do that, and I was like, what am I doing? I don't even have time to go home and clean up the gloves and get started for this next event.
So everything we do is just going to kind of be on a scale. There may be an ask right now, hey, you think you guys can handle this job? And I might have to say, no, I don't think we're there yet, but we can handle some smaller jobs that are similar, and we just kind of grow to that space.
So it's just everything we do is how to—honestly, purity, just want to be good environmental stewards, be good members of the community. Just try to have a positive impact. I think that's the biggest thing with me. It's just when my time is up, I just want people to say, yo, Preston tried. He tried to do good. He did something good for the community.
I think that's important. What you're saying—know what your energy is, what do you have, what are your resources, and find the alignment between what you want to do and what your resources actually allow you to do. It takes some trial and error, probably, to figure out what that right balance looks like.
You can't be too proud to not learn from a situation. Like I said, I've been—I'll proudly say that one of the things we do is pick up litter. I'll go against anybody in the world picking up litter, and I think my team will come out on top, if not towards the top. But there are still times when I'm just like, hey, that might be too much, or we can't do that. We don't have the resources to take that on. And I think that's okay to say. We do what we can as long as we can, as often as we can.
You have a partnership with the City of Raleigh. Can you talk about that and how that came about?
So when we started Great Raleigh Cleanup in October of 2020, things were rocking and rolling. It had naturally and progressively become my full-time job. But in the fall of 2023, I wanted to do more. I had stopped teaching. I wasn't doing insurance anymore. I just said I need to be out picking up more litter. I need to, honestly, in my mind, I was like, I need to be able to justify this full-time job that I'm doing.
So I talked to a friend of mine named Maggie Kane, who runs A Place at the Table, which is an awesome organization, and they serve a lot of people facing housing insecurity. I said, Maggie, do you think the folks that you serve would be down to come out with me and pick up litter? She said, absolutely.
One of the things I did is I went to the Raleigh City Council and asked for some seed funding. They gave us about $12,500 to $13,000, and I poured all of that into the individuals. Every single dollar went into—I had to get workers' comp insurance, but the rest went into paying these folks to come out and figure out if we can make this a thing. It was super successful.
It was so successful that the City of Raleigh saw it and said, we want to invest more in this, because not only are you doing the work of picking up litter, but you're serving the community, a community that's often overlooked, often turned a blind eye to, and you're giving them opportunity. So it was a good opportunity for the city to be supporting multiple causes and also supporting the nonprofit.
What was that like, going to Council and asking for this? Was that new for you? Was that—
Nah, because to be honest, and anybody who knows me knows I don't really take anything too serious. So I knew a couple council members, so I just texted. I was like, hey, Christina, yo, can I get $15,000 to try to—I mean, what's she going to say, yes or no? Whether I stand up there in a suit and tie or text her on the phone, I'm like, this is what I want.
I think the thought of what we were trying to do, and the idea was so awesome that whether I stood in front of—and I know most of the council, and they're obviously good council people, but they're all people. So just come to them like a person. Yo, I need some bread in my pocket. I want to do this awesome thing. She's like, here you go. Without hesitation, they gave me that seed funding. Then after that, the city came back with the larger contract, which we're almost done with year two of.
I think that story is a good reminder of, well, something my dad used to say—people are people. They're people at the end of the day. That's all they are—people.
So really, seeing this whole work of building a strong town or improving our neighborhood, or trying to solve some big, complicated issue, at the end of the day, it probably boils down to relationships, right? How you talk, who you talk to, what you say, the story that you tell. Really, I think it boils down to that. But also, in the same vein, it might feel really complicated, but I would bet you a pretty penny that once you really get into it, what it boils down to is, well, have you taken the time to get to know the people in this arena?
Care about housing? Have you taken time to get to know anyone involved in housing? Get coffee with them. Just hear their story. What are they working on? What are they hoping to do, right? Even if you disagree with them. Transit, get to know anybody who works in transit. Homelessness, talk to anybody, right? Because people are going to—I think there was that saying—people remember how you make them feel, right?
That's a big part of this work is not just changing laws, changing policies, building more housing, shrinking the parking load, all of that. We care about those outcomes. But I think those outcomes are definitely downstream from relationships and then being willing to just go ask, can you help us? Can you help me do this?
All right, what's next for the Great Raleigh Cleanup? Where do you hope it goes from here?
I want us to grow. I need—I know personally I need help. I'm actually probably in a couple days going to post a job opportunity. This will be our second part-time job. But I need it to be more than me and just one part-timer. I need it to be several people making this engine run.
I want to get to a place where right now we service a lot of folks, the unhoused folks, by giving them job opportunities. But occasionally that money kind of taps out, and I want to get to a place where that money doesn't run out, because they need the opportunities to work, and there's so much litter around that we have more work to do.
So I'm just hoping that we grow. I'm really looking for that next big jump for the Great Raleigh Cleanup. We got here in six years, Tiffany, without me anticipating any of it, and I couldn't be any more grateful. But it's time for us to take that next step, and that's where I'm putting my focus—just continuing to build relationships. I know earlier in the interview, we called it partnerships, but it's just relationships.
Continue to build relationships. You never know who you're going to be in the room with. You never know who you're going to bump into. Just be a genuine person. Try to make them feel good, try to make them laugh, and let them be honest about what it is that we do, and see what that turns into.
But Great Raleigh Cleanup is going to continue to pick up litter in the summertime. We're going to continue to partner with the music venues and do our awesome landfill diversion stuff. We're going to continue to have community nights for people who just want to come out and be a part of a community and do something. We are just going to try and continue to do true, meaningful work.
So is your vision someone's out there picking up trash every day? What's your target?
I'd say at this point we probably do three days of our Workforce program and one day of volunteering a week. I would love for us to be not only four days of Workforce, but what about four days with maybe two different crews going to two different places, and maybe instead of just one volunteer event on the weekends, we got one volunteer event here and another volunteer event there.
We're not having to worry about, hey, when's that next check coming? Because we have grantors and donors, and we've laid out our funding strategy so much so that we're good to go, just good to continue to do the work. I'm able to maybe go around and meet with people and create new partnerships and build new relationships and potentially tell this story in other places in North Carolina, because Raleigh isn't the only place that has folks facing housing insecurity. Maybe we take it to Durham, we take it to Charlotte or something like that, potentially get some similar programs up and running.
But I like what we do now. I like the extent that we do it. I want to do it more. There are a couple more programs I'd like to add—some educational stuff—but I really just want to see this organization as it is just grow and just do more and make it not random or rare to see Great Raleigh Cleanup out picking up trash. Make it the norm.
What would you say systemic change on the littering side looks like? I'm just curious. Have you thought about this? How can we just get people to stop?
It's more systemic. It's a culture thing. You have to change the culture. I'll never forget, I was talking to a city council person recently, and we were talking about litter, and they were like, I'm going to reach out to some cities and see how they manage it. I was thinking in my mind, who are you reaching out to? Who manages it? I mean, you could call Japan. You could call a couple countries in Europe. But I'm like, you ain't calling nobody in the United States of America that's managing it. Because I follow people all over this country, big cities and small, north, south, urban, rural, that are picking up litter.
So I'm just trying to figure out, because it's cultural. It's just a thing that people often overlook, because people got other stuff going on. Litter is not a priority to everybody. I always say that I'm in a privileged position that I get to wake up every day and worry about other people's litter getting picked up.
So it's just—it's hard for me to see a change. You could put preventative measures in place, but ultimately, it just has to be a culture shift.
I think you're right about that. And I think that's also true about anything in the conversation about the future of our cities and towns and neighborhoods. You know, it's partly material change, sometimes it's policy change, but it's also cultural change. How do you get people to think differently about whatever it is you care about, right? Because you've got to get the hearts too. You've got to change values, because culture flows downstream from values. That's definitely the bigger conversation to have in all of these areas that we think about at Strong Towns.
I'm going to tell you one story. I had a gentleman when I very first started Workforce—unhoused gentleman—and he worked for me a few times. We cleaned up some roads. One thing he said to me was he was like, I was on a bus and I was driving past the road we cleaned up. I looked down and I saw litter, and he said out of his mouth, he said, who littered on my street?
That was an ownership that that person took now. He has an ownership stake in this city and it being litter-free, which before he might not have. So I think just getting people involved in stuff, once you start doing stuff, you take ownership in it, and you want to see a positive outcome from it. So whether it be litter, whether it be whatever, get involved in it, and I'm pretty sure at a certain point, it'll just start to become a part of your culture, a part of who you are.
Preston, in closing, can you share a little bit about Raleigh? I always like to ask my guest, what are a couple of cafes, restaurants, museums? What are some places you like to recommend people check out when they come to visit?
Raleigh's my favorite little growing city. It's much larger than it was when I got here, but it still very much has that small-town feel. I'm not a big cafe guy. I prefer to have a beer.
So if I'm doing that, the place that I shouted out earlier that helped us start Workforce is A Place at the Table, which is pay what you can. They not only have a great mission, but they have phenomenal food. Get the chicken and waffle—it's great.
But if you want to go have a beer, hit up Tapyard, Mordecai Blotter. If you want to go see some culture, the Science Museum is great. I was at the art museum two days ago. That's a phenomenal space. I also love to go there. The art museum is really—and most of the time it's free. So that's another great place. You don't have an excuse. Go get cultured.
Even when you're broke, you can go to the art museum.
Exactly. You don't even have to go inside. There's so much nature, sculptures and stuff, art installations. I was actually there because a former volunteer of mine who passed away had a bench dedicated to him there at the art museum. I found out that not only did this person volunteer with me, but apparently he volunteered with every organization. Phenomenal human being that we lost.
But yeah, you could just go out—as soon as I get my dog, as soon as this is over, I'm taking my dog to the art museum, and we're going to walk around, because that's just one of the best places.
You've got a cultured dog then.
Yeah, we stop, we observe the art and take it all in. I always like going to Lake Johnson. I don't know if you're a big walk-around-the-lake or trail kind of person, but I like hopping in a kayak at Lake Johnson.
Nice. That's a good time. Yes. Preston, thank you so much for joining me on this conversation. It's been a delight to bring your story and your insights to our audience. So I really appreciate you taking the time.
Tiffany, I'm grateful for the opportunity, grateful to always talk about it. It's been an amazing journey that I could have never foreseen. So whenever I get the opportunity to talk about our highs and lows and wins and losses, I appreciate it, and I'm grateful to you and Strong Towns for giving me that opportunity.
Absolutely. To our audience, thank you so much for joining me for another conversation. I'll put links in the show notes. You can learn more about the Great Raleigh Cleanup. If there's someone in your community who you think we should have on the show, please let us know using the suggested guest form. This is how we learn about a lot of different people that I get to interview, and we definitely couldn't have as nearly great a show without you guys letting us know about champions in your town. So click that link, let us know about somebody, and be sure to check out the links to learn more about what Preston is doing. If you're in the Raleigh area, you should definitely reach out.
I'll be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.