A teenager from Toxteth has been given the chance to transform a fly-tipping hotspot that has been the 'scourge' of his community for years now.
Khan Odita, 14, has now signed a lease for a space on Mulgrave Street, Toxteth that has long been victim to fly-tippers and is considered the "scourge" of his close knit community. Khan will be converting the space into a community garden that will not only improve the sight of the street with greenery, but will also provide a centre for various community activities.
Khan is the founder of Mulgrave Street Action Group (MSAG), a community interest company that he set up after realising the extent of the fly-tipping problem in his area while making a film. Khan's garden project was MSAG's first but not only project and the teenager told the ECHO that he has now appointed a board of trustees from his community to help guide the company's future ambitions.
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Khan told the ECHO : ""The fly-tipping is a continuous issue unfortunately. Only recently I confronted somebody for leaving their entire blue bin on the land, but he just said that's where they, the Liverpool Street Scene [a subsidiary of the council who deal with fly tipping], collect it.
""We shouldn't be putting our rubbish there because it really degrades the area. I'm trying to turn that piece of land into something positive.
"Last summer I made my short film interviewing my neighbours, friends and family about the fly tipping issue and since then I've been campaigning to get the garden built. We as a community have been slowly moving forward to acquire a license to the land and now we've just signed a lease.
"In L8 we have a really strong community of people who love the area and there's generations and generations of people who have lived here but I think there is a minority who do fly tip. Maybe they're people who don't spend much time in the area or who live outside the area.
"I don't think the fly tipping problem is getting any better, but hopefully in building the garden it will put a stop to it in the area. Hopefully it will change people's mindsets for what greenspaces are used for."
MSAG has turned from an unassuming but innocent idea into something that's shaping up as a force to be reckoned with. It's not only that the community interest company now has a board of trustees to help Khan manifest his ambitions, but that it has the support of a community - from which those trustees were appointed - behind it also.
"We are building a strong force so I hope everybody can get on board with us at some point. MSAG has had a really positive response from the community since we were founded.
"Out of the garden we want to deliver a wide variety of activities such as ESOL classes, art classes, language classes. The land itself has so much potential that once the garden is built there are going to be so many things that we can do with it.
"We plan to also spread greenery and flowers up and down the street. But we'll just see where the wind takes us.
"We have a brilliant board of trustees now who I know will be able to guide us into he right direction and come up with some great ideas."
