KMB also proudly promotes our Student Advisory Board (SAB). The SAB consists of local high school students who have a passion for their environment. These 25 students meet monthly to discuss relevant topics such as “Going Green”, carbon footprints and composting. Every other month the group holds Clean Team litter pickup events throughout the city and participates in the agency’s special events, such as Taste and Trade, Recycles Day and Christmas in the Park. At Christmas in the Park, the SAB partners with the KMB board to make and distribute pinecone bird feeders and literature to the 30,000 people that attend the three-night event.

To promote our programs in schools, in 2007 KMB debuted Lucky the Ladybug’s classroom programs on Litter Prevention and Recycling. Lucky the Ladybug is the mascot of KMB and is said to the “First Lady of Litter Prevention in Mesquite.” Lucky’s first program was at Motley Elementary for two first grade classrooms. She and her spokesperson talked about the sources of litter, litter prevention, the city’s recycling programs and how items are recycled. Lucky took her message of Litter Prevention and Recycling to local children at Trash Bash and Christmas in the Park. In 2008, Lucky is scheduled to increase her school and event programming. In addition to live programs in the schools, KMB in conjunction with the COM distributes 33,500 book covers to 39 local elementary and middle schools. Each of these book covers contains information and a crossword puzzle about litter prevention, waste handling, recycling and the prevention of water pollution.

KMB is proud to impact our local school programs through our School Yard Habitat beautification program. Each year KMB awards grants up to $500 to local schools to promote outdoor wildlife habitats, outdoor learning areas and beautification programs. Local teachers submit applications, however, the students must participate in the development of the project. In 2007, the program awarded $2,190 in School Yard Habitat Funds to 6 projects. KMB was also a proud partner with Historic Mesquite for “The Big Field Trip” project. This debut program brought 125 fourth graders to local historic homesteads where they learned about life in the Victorian era. KMB taught the students about wildlife, gardening and the concept of re-use recycling of that era.

Local MISD schools focus the month of November on Recycling. Through a cooperative partnership between MISD, the City’s SWD and KMB, the first two weeks of November focus on Recycling education within the school district. This year 14 schools participated in the program, in which each student receives a free blue recycling bag to take home. The students fill the bags with recyclable items at home and return them to the school. Each class competes to see who can bring back the most recyclable items. During this period, the students learn about recycling in the classrooms, see presentations from SWD’s Recycling Fairy or Lucky the Ladybug and receive flyers to take home on the topic. This year over 14 tons of recycling was collected during the two week program

Public Awareness: KMB works to promote public awareness of our programs through many different avenues. In 2007 news articles and pictures about many of our events appeared in the local press including information on Trash Bash, Recycles Day and Christmas in the Park. In December, Lucky the Ladybug’s head was stolen during an event and created a humorous local media sensation to try to get it back. Thanks to our media coverage Lucky’s head was returned the next day. In 2007, KMB received a total of 15.25 minutes of air time on local TV and radio stations, including NBC5, FOX4, CBS11, Univision23, KEOM and KRLD radio for a PR value of $89,807 and reaching a viewing audience of 3,265,593 people. KMB received 376.5 inches of print coverage from The Dallas Morning News, The Mesquite News and Neighbors Go. KMB also had articles published on the following news websites: dallasnews.com, msnbc.com, mesquitenews.com, wfaa.com, kdfw.com, ktvt.com, krld.com, kxas.com and Neighborsgo.com.

In addition to these local press mediums, KMB also had two informative water bill inserts and an article on Lucky the Ladybug published in the COM’s newsletter, Mainstream. Each of these items was distributed to over 37,000 homes. KMB also decorated two informational kiosks in the main entry of a key City building. KMB and the SAB also debuted two new ways of conversing with our local teenagers through text messaging and a myspace account found at www.myspace.com/keepmesquitebeautiful. Both the text messaging and the myspace account have been successful with the site receiving over 200 hits. KMB’s website also serves as a means to inform the public about our upcoming events. In 2007, www.keepmesquitebeautiful.org, had over 230,000 hits and over 6,300 visitors.