BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — If you ride through the City of Buffalo, you might notice the streets are looking cleaner. All it took was three young men, some trash bags, and a love for the Queen City.
“Buffalo is the underdog right now and I love rooting for the underdog. We just want to do our part and show people like, yo, we gotta take care of our community," said Darius Foster, 22, of Buffalo.
When Foster, Tayvion Nelson, 21, and Hassen Moody, 20, walk through their hometown, they're disappointed by how it looks.
"A lot of trash and stuff like that. How could you walk outside your house and see all that dirt in your lawn and not pick it up? Like--I’ll pick it up," said Foster.
So that’s what they do—every Saturday for a few hours. It doesn’t take much, but it makes a huge difference.
They’re musical group called 14 Mafia. 14 being the 716 area code added together.
"And Buffalo is known for its mafia, so we keep that as the culture," said Nelson.
They want to use their creative platform to make a change. They’ve been cleaning the streets for about a month now as the 14 Clean Team. These are streets they know well.
"This is some of the places where we grew up...we started at Jefferson and Clinton, that was my childhood area growing up, downtown," said Nelson.
They’re just getting started—but the community is already recognizing their work.
"Young Black men, out here making a difference and this is what we need in our community," said a neighbor passing by.
Seeing that reaction from the community made them want to keep going.
"I feel like that’s why they get so emotional, it gives them a sense of hope," said Foster.
And they want good neighbors to join them on their journey to clean the Queen City.
“Our city is beautiful, we don’t have to leave the inner city of Buffalo to feel comfortable, we need to fix that," said Foster.
Their next stop is to clean up Utica Station on Saturday October 23. They are looking for volunteers to help them out and donations of
Trash bags, gloves, masks, rakes and more.
You can bring donations to their clean ups or use Cashapp: $14mafia.
