Retake Roma has major turnout for WakeUpRoma campaign

In 2010, Retake Roma was created as a small non profit organization that focused on cleaning up smaller parks in Rome. This weekend, Retake Roma brought out nearly 3,000 volunteers to help clean up the entire city as a part of their WakeUpRoma campaign.

People came out and cleaned up the city in different ways. Responsibilities of the volunteers varied from picking up trash to painting over deteriorating parts of the city. The crowd cleaned up Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, Piazza di Porta Magggiore, Villa Paganini and Piazza Anco Marzio in Osita. This event was funded by Retake Roma as well as LUISS ENLABS, a start up accelerator.

Volunteers started at 9am in a coordinated effort to improve the public spaces. Rebecca Spitzmiller, co-founder of Retake Roma was upbeat about the turnout.

“We are happy with the synergy of many different realities of people of all ages, many new ‘retakers’ that we have reached. The music, the joy and the good will of volunteers have ensured the success of the day,” said Spitzmiller. The initiative received a lot positive feedback – the event was even successful on Twitter as #WakeUpRoma was a trending topic on Saturday.

Retake Roma had a very successful weekend and will look to gain more retakers from this event. A  retaker is described as “any citizen who is actively dedicated to the recovery of spaces and public goods that are in a state of decay.”

For more information on Retake Roma, visit their website www.retakeroma.org

– Ben Jacob