In an effort to clean Valley Grande, the city council elected to enlist the help of Teen Challenge of Alabama.

The non-profit group works with local churches to improve the lives of young men, who they bring in.

Now that group will work cleaning up two stretches of highways in Valley Grande.

“It’s just going to be for a trail period to begin with,” said Tom Lee, mayor of Valley Grande. “This is a good way for trash to be collected along the sides of our highways, but at the same time help out a non-profit organization.”

Teen Challenge is a youth organization focused on helping young men gets their lives on track, but they need jobs to support the program Teen Challenge Director Jason Easter said.

“We have 28 guys in this program,” Easter said. “We put the bid in so we can take the job. We have to have local work to support us. So this opportunity is great.”

Lee said the workers would pick up trash along County Road 81 and County Road 37 twice a month.

“It should be good because we will have them picking up trash once a week,” Lee said. “Plus this is two places that are high traffic areas. High traffic often means high trash amounts. We are going to see how it works out with this new system. If it is good, we will continue it.”

The program will start as a 90-day trial period, in order to see how effective the clean-up job will be.

“We are going to have four of our guys working out there,” said Easter.

“So we will see.”