FREO locals are being called on to give the city a hearty spring clean today (Saturday September 12) as Good Fund Freo kicks off its first major initiative.
Spread across the CBD, the Big Freo Spring Clean aims to give the city a facelift, but there’s a major focus on the long-vacant Hungry Jack’s building on the Cappuccino Strip.
Property activator and social enterprise SPACEMRKT has recently secured access to the site while its development as a sports bar progresses, and is planning to turn it into a temporary space for young people to hang out.
• Llewellyn Reyes and Gabby Mears from SPACEMARKT and Good Fund Freo’s Sarah Booth have big, temporary plans, for Hungry Jacks. Photo by Jaz Brooks
SPACEMARK director Sarah Booth is also the founder of Good Fund Freo and says the Spring Clean is about more than just picking up rubbish, but a day that “celebrates civic pride”.
“Every cigarette butt picked up, every tag removed, every window cleaned, and every shopfront cared for sends an important message – we love our home” Ms Booth said.
Volunteers will meet at 9am in ‘Horatio’s Lane’, behind Gino’s, before spreading out across central Fremantle.,
With limited supplies available, Good Fund Freo is asking participants to bring their own gloves and rubbish bags.
The event is supported by the Fremantle Foundation, City of Fremantle and Fremantle Men’s Shed, along with “a whole host of local residents and businesses”.
Good Fund Freo is something of an evolution of the Fremantle Foundation’s Impact 100 fund, which would grant a local not-for-profit $100,000.
• Good Fund Freo’s Sarah Booth has a hands-on approach to giving Freo a spruce-up.
Ms Booth told the Herald she realised there were many initiatives that fell through the cracks because of their size or a variety of other factors, often leaving them to languor.
So she came up with the idea of a flexible fund to that might pay a charity’s van rego right up to the possibility of buying a building.
“We aspire to ‘fund the gaps’ – which might be grassroots groups, volunteer organisations, innovative responses to some of our wicked problems, and community-led care – things that might not fit neatly in a box,” Ms Booth said.
She hopes to raise $300,000 by January next year
For more information about the Spring Clean head to goodfundfreo.org or check their Instagram.
by JAZ BROOKS and
ELLIE O’GRADY