Keep It Clean, Selma is partnering with the Children’s Policy Council’s Serve Selma to pick up litter around the city.

The new partnership will allow people who have been sentenced to community service the option to complete hours by cleaning up the city.

“One of the things that I’m seeing a need for in our community is a process for people to do community service that would be meaningful and would help our community, and there would be some accountability with it,” said Dallas County District Judge Bob Armstrong.

“It’s a way for someone to have consequences and not get locked up.”

Amy Carmichael, project coordinator for Keep It Clean, said she is happy to partner with Serve Selma.

“I am really positive about it. I really like the idea because this gives us a way to cover a lot more ground,” Carmichael said.

Carmichael said she hears a lot about litter in Selma, and she is hoping by picking it up people will be encouraged to stop littering.

“I think a lot of people get really negative about [the trash] and to me, it’s just really important for things to look good and beautiful,” she said. “Then other businesses will want to come here, and people will want to come visit.”

By adding people from Serve Selma, Carmichael said they should be able to go from picking up trash once a month to once a week, beginning Aug. 19.

Armstrong also said having the additional hours will help volunteers cover more ground.

“We want to partner with them and help provide manpower for them to accomplish the goals that they’ve got,” he said. “When we see a need in the community, we try to be proactive in creating solutions to the problem we see. Trash is one of the problems.”

Carmichael said Keep it Clean organizers still want volunteers to come out and help.

“I think if we did have some volunteers to clean up beside them, to show that you don’t have to be made to do this,” Carmichael said.

Carmichael said Keep It Clean is also working to educate the youth on littering and why they shouldn’t.

“I think a lot of kids around here don’t know that’s it’s bad and don’t know why it’s bad,” Carmichael said. “They see their parents doing it and they see other people doing it, so we really just want to in the simplest way possible get that information out there to them.”