They could be tubing down the Coldwater River, or eating ice cream in the shade or inside playing video games for that matter. Instead, four teenage girls scrub graffiti from a concrete wall behind Coquihalla Middle School while the baking hot sun beats down on them.

Wearing her easily recognizable blue Smart Step T-shirt McKenzie Gabara smiles and actually describes the event as fun.

“It feels good to volunteer and to be able to say ‘I cleaned this wall.'”

(And that’s something Gabara has a double claim to as she helped clean the same wall last year.)

Not that the work is easy. After three cans of Vandal Mark Remover and lots of elbow grease the graffiti is only just beginning to fade.

“It’s worth it though – making people happy that their property is not vandalized,” says Courtney Hogue-Charters.

Similar groups of young people cleaned or painted over the work of vandals all around town as a part of the Smart Step Youth Association’s second annual Paint Our City Clean initiative on Monday. Close to 50 youth turned up to participate in the event, which received a lot of positive feedback from the community last year, said Smart Step Executive Director Nicholas Kang.

With the help of the Community Policing Office, Smart Step volunteers identified a number of locations around town and then dispatched volunteer crews to clean up these targeted locations.

These youth are working hard not just to clean up the community, but to change the image of teens.

“This event really captures this,” said Kang. “If the young people step up to clean up the community, people can see there are different types of young people and not all of them are out there making a mess.”

Vandalism continues to be a concern for the City of Merritt, said Leisure Services Director Larry Plotnikov. Though the city has taken measures to try and mitigate the problem, vandals manage to deface properties with graffiti and leave broken glass at places like the Rotary Park band shell.

“Some of the vandalism seems to be the work of a few – it has similar characteristics,” says Plotnikov. “It’s unfortunate because when things are broken it costs money to repair them and make the area look like it should and those are our tax dollars.”

With this in mind, Plotnikov said it is commendable what Smart Step has done.

“Most of the kids are good kids and some just need more activities to keep them busy,” he said. “These youth are the future of our community, they just need some guidance and a sense of purpose.”

Kang is hoping that events like Paint Our City Clean will help to accomplish this.

“We want to change the culture of the youth in the community and get them to take ownership, then hopefully we can start to see a wider spread change,” said Kang. “Over the years it’s been the expectation for young people to get up to mischief but we want to change those expectations.”

Monday’s event was a kick off to Merritt’s Youth Week, which will run through to Friday when the youth will celebrate International Youth Day. Besides Paint Our City Clean, youth participated in a street clean up on Wednesday and a week long sports camp for children, which raised money for the Nicola Valley and District Food Bank.