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Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Julie Tanous cook up a friendship

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84 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Luzerne County on Saturday

WILKES-BARRE &mdash; Former city council candidate Mark Shaffer&rsquo;s impassioned efforts to clean up Wilkes-Barre, with the help from some local volunteers, has continued into the new year as a group of volunteers picked up trash and swept the sidewalks along Hazle Street on Saturday.
				&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;ve been doing this for almost two years now,&rdquo; Shaffer said. &ldquo;This is our first stop in 2021 so far.&rdquo;
				Shaffer said that a large part of his reasoning for wanting to clean up the streets of the city he calls home stems from some of the things he saw around the city while running for Wilkes-Barre city council in 2019.
				&ldquo;When I would go around the city, I would see all this trash lying around,&rdquo; Shaffer said. &ldquo;I knew I wanted to do something about it.&rdquo;
				Through the use of Facebook and word-of-mouth, Shaffer began to organize small community cleanups like the one held on Saturday.
				Volunteers could be seen up and down Hazle Street right near Mommy Dearest Restaurant, picking up trash and sweeping up dirt and debris from the sidewalks.
				The group touched on a lot of different age brackets, with children such as 5-year-old Benjamin &ldquo;Benji&rdquo; Allen working dilligently alongside his adult counterparts.
				&ldquo;Benji&rsquo;s like our mascot,&rdquo; Shaffer joked.
				Benji&rsquo;s stepmother said that the child had taken an interest in science and the environment from a very early age.
				&ldquo;It&rsquo;s great that he&rsquo;s here working hard,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a good value to learn for him.&rdquo;
				In fact, Shaffer&rsquo;s group consisted of a number of young children and their parents, trying to instill the value of a hard day&rsquo;s work as well as pride in their community.
				&ldquo;I love seeing how many of these kids wanted to come and help out,&rdquo; Shaffer said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re never too young to want to help clean up.&rdquo;
				Shaffer told reporters that he spotted this specific strip of Hazle Street while making a run to the pharmacy, and thought it would be a good place for a cleanup.
				&ldquo;My hope is that some of our other volunteers will propose places of their own to clean up,&rdquo; Shaffer said. &ldquo;We started a new Facebook group called Wilkes-Barre Worker Bees to organize.&rdquo;
				While the group hasn&rsquo;t picked out their next stop yet, Shaffer said that the group was committed to holding a cleanup on at least a biweekly basis.
				&ldquo;We&rsquo;re hoping to do them even more frequently, if we can,&rdquo; Shaffer said. &ldquo;I hope we could inspire people to do this in their own neighborhoods, too.&rdquo;

Volunteers aim to clean up WB