They came out in large numbers to give something back to their community.

Close to 100 contractors, teachers and students from around the district gathered at Sensisyusten School Wednesday for a day clean-up, beautification and graffiti removal.

The Westbank First Nation school was the scene of a vandalism spree last month in which doors were broken, windows smashed and bathrooms destroyed.

Damage was estimated at about $30,000.

Two 10-year-old boys have admitted to causing the damage.

Most of the clean-up work was done by students from Sensisyusten School as well as former students now attending Constable Neil Bruce Middle School and Mount Boucherie Secondary.

Students helped with painting, landscaping and other projects around the school, community centre and ball field.

Councillor, Mike DeGuevara, says some good has come out of last month's incident.

"The community is coming together to clean-up, do some painting and get the graffiti looked after and beautify the school and the recreation complex here," says DeGuevara.

He says having the kids do the work gives them a sense of pride.

"By bringing in the community to help, they don't take it for granted that it is just going to get done and get fixed, they take ownership in it" says Deguevara.

"If they paint it and if they know anybody or see anybody that might be painting, they can take ownership of the situation too and say that's my community and we worked hard to make it look like that."

Jordon Ned, 14, a student at CNB heard about the clean-up effort last week and says it was easy for her and her friends to say yes.

"We're here to help out our community and fix up where we live, and make it easier for people to live here," says Ned.

"We want to make it look more presentable to the rest of the community and show them we can keep our community clean."

Ned says it was important for the youth of the WFN community to come to support the effort.

"We want to show them that, as kids, we can come in and help instead of having to rely on older people to help. We want to show we can take control of our actions and that we can help out."

Meantime, DeGuevara says the investigation into the vandalism is still on-going.

"There are some different social issues that have to be weighed out as to the reasons why. How the community wishes to deal with them, we'll have to decide and if they are community members, it will have to go to the general membership."

Link: Westside school vandals surrender Link: Two Westside schools vandalized