Parents usually consider themselves lucky when a child volunteers to keep their room clean.

Jaishon Faison, 8, has volunteered for a much larger task — keeping the grounds clean at the apartment complex he calls home.

Days after walking a petition around Barkley Manor Apartments, getting signatories to agree to properly dispose of their trash, Jaishon stood in his shared backyard.

“I used to just come back here and look at the trees,” he said. On the other side of the trees sits an expansive, pot-hole laden field.

“I just like nature and birds,” he continues. “There’s wonderful things in nature.”

But in the line of trees, through which he and his brother Ahmad used to scramble, is a thicket of trash. Fans, chairs and plenty of broken glass.

Adults might call it an eyesore. Jaishon calls it pollution. He also calls it — his backyard — dangerous.

When he and some friends grew worried about a rabbit that scurried into the trash, they took action. He credits his friend Hannah Allen as being the first who decided to grab a trash bag and get their hands dirty.

They, along with his brother Ahmad and her sister Hailey, picked up two large bags of trash between them.

“We don’t want animals to get hurt,” he said. “Or little kids.”

Jaishon, who recently learned about pollution and recycling at school, knew it was just beginning.

On a piece of NASCAR stationary, Jaishon got more than ten of his neighbors to sign a petition agreeing to properly dispose of their trash.

“I had to sign it, too,” said Tiffany Thompson, Jaishon’s mom.

As is tradition at Barkley Manor, Jaishon taped the petition to the apartment manager’s door.

For the rest of this story, please see this week's edition of The Cadiz Record.