Training as a Mascot; One-Day Makeovers for Streets

28 July 2012

Madison Blandford (far left) and her classmates and neighbors show off their Ugandan beads at Madison's recent jewelry party (VOA/F. Elmasry)

BOB DOUGHTY: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

JUNE SIMMS: And I'm June Simms. This week on our program we visit a camp where sports team mascots go for training. We also tell you about a group that helps cities bring new life -- for a day -- to troubled streets. And we learn about a group that helps women in Uganda earn money by selling beads at parties in the United States.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: Communities often depend on drawings and written documents to describe the changes they want to make to improve neighborhoods. But a nonprofit organization called Better Block shows the public a working example of how the proposed improvements would look. It makes the changes along one block for one day.

(SOUND)

JUNE SIMMS: That was how an older, mostly empty business district near downtown Denver, Colorado, came to life on a recent Saturday. A street musician played his guitar as people walked, biked and pushed baby strollers down Twenty-fifth Avenue in the Jefferson Park area. A crowd enjoyed lunch along what had been an empty stretch of sidewalk the day before. One of the empty storefronts became a bike rental shop. Another was a restaurant for the day.