The impact of a group of volunteers known as Pride In Community Appearance can be seen throughout Fort Dodge.

Usually called PICA, the group makes the town look beautiful by taking care of flower beds and landscaping on public property. PICA members tend to flower beds in parks and around the welcome signs at the gateways to the community. They give the landscaping at Harlan and Hazel Rogers Sports Complex a thorough grooming before the girls state softball tournament every summer. In perhaps the group’s biggest project, its members turned a stub of street off Martin Luther King Drive near the railroad tracks into an attractive area of grass, trees and other plantings. Another major project dressed up the area around the Freedom Rock near A Street and Second Avenue South.

PICA members have been known to pick up paint brushes as well. They painted the rising and setting sun murals in the underpass on Phinney Park Drive. They also repainted the gazebo in the City Square.

All that may seem like back-breaking labor. Not to the members of PICA. Jan Wilson, who founded the group 22 years ago with his wife, Phyllis, said “It doesn’t seem to be work.”

While there is still a chill in the morning air, this is the time of year that PICA starts getting to work. They have already spent a few hours touching up the landscaping around the Municipal Building at 819 First Ave. S. Another work session is scheduled for Thursday morning.

And the volunteers would welcome some more people to join them.

PICA volunteers work twice a week, starting in April and going up to the end of October.

To sign up, call Jan and Phyllis Wilson at 576-0296 or write to them at jpwilson@frontiernet.net.

PICA is an incredible group, and Fort Dodge is fortunate to have it.

We encourage everyone who likes to get outside and doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty to consider joining PICA. By doing so, they will help to make a major, positive impact on their community.