Meet Our Community: Shweta Sharma

As part of our seasonal spotlight series, we’re celebrating our incredible employees, partners, and volunteers who help make the work of Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful (KCCB) possible. In our Earth Day Blog, we talk about the ‘Ripple Effect’ and how all it takes is one person to inspire many to make a change in their community. Today, we’re excited to introduce Shweta, a volunteer for almost a year, who has already begun making ripples in our community by sharing, learning, and restoring our creeks.

Role: Cleanup and Restoration Volunteer

With KCCB: For Almost 1 Year!

Shweta Restoring Around the Creek

Fun Facts 🌟

• Happy place: The Sierra / Yosemite 🏞️ 

• Unusual creek sightings: Appliances, carts, tires 🛞 🌱

• Favorite hobbies: Backpacking, running, marathons 🥾 🏃🏽‍♀️ 🌲

• Favorite place to eat: Crepes Bistro 😋

• Favorite color: Lavender Purple 🌈

When asked about her hobbies, Shweta shared, “I’m also a marathon runner… I like traveling to places and running marathons there… usually one in the U.S. every year and one international.”

How it All Started 🌱

Shweta’s journey with KCCB began with a company-organized creek cleanup, where she saw firsthand the scale of dumping hidden behind the trails she regularly ran. What had once been out of sight quickly became impossible to ignore. After that, she continued looking for more ways to stay involved outdoors. 

“That was the first time I actually saw the amount of things that get dumped in the creek… I was like, ‘Oh wow, we’re really dumping a lot in there.’” Shweta described.

She later rediscovered KCCB after volunteering and decided to join the mailing list. Since attending her first event, it was easy to find her rhythm, turning a one-time experience into a consistent commitment every Sunday.

Shweta Having Fun at a Clean Up

Impact on the Community 🌎

Through monthly cleanups and restoration events, Shweta has seen both the challenges and progress within the creek. From pulling out shopping carts, tires, or appliances, to removing a chain-link fence, the work she contributes to with KCCB is both hands-on and impactful. What makes it most meaningful, she communicated, is the community. This volunteer community comes together to take care of things that one person could not do alone.

Change is not something that can happen overnight. Shweta noticed, more recently, something encouraging: certain cleanup sites no longer require the full time allotted to be restored. To her, this magnified something bigger. It reflected sustained, collective impact over time.

Shweta said, “You know what, it doesn’t even seem like we would need the whole three hours today because there isn’t that much to clean anymore… that’s a good feeling.”

Shweta Engaging in Community

What does this mean? It means we get to spend more time in our community, not just taking care of it. It also means we get to work on different things and in different ways. What Shweta noted was something essential that isn’t often talked about. What do we do when we start reaching our goals? What happens when our creeks and the spaces we care about begin to be safer and cleaner? This is a major theme, even Deb Kramer has described, which is to keep dreaming and consider the next big steps for our community.

Shweta added, “Seeing that contrast… from this dump to this beautiful creek bed with trees and water flowing, that’s really nice.”

Looking Ahead: The Future of KCCB ☀️🌳

Shweta plans to continue showing up consistently and balancing her marathon training with regular Sunday volunteer events. She’s also beginning to bring others along, like her colleagues from work, and encouraging her gym community to get involved and experience the impact firsthand.

“I’ve been telling my community at work to join… just look at where you start and where you end… That improvement feels really magical.”

For her, the future is about building momentum: continuing the work, growing the community, and helping more people connect with and care for their local environment.

Shweta Finds Odd Things Near the Creek

When asked about her experiences doing cleanups. Shweta discussed that there’s a bigger draw to doing this work in the community. It’s the process of giving back that really makes it feel like such purposeful work.

“You don’t feel it until you’ve actually been there… that satisfaction of giving back to the community and the environment.”

Final Thoughts ✨

Volunteering with KCCB provides a tangible sense of accomplishment. For Shweta, the combination of physical effort, visible impact, and shared purpose creates a uniquely rewarding experience.

It’s simple but powerful: show up, contribute, and witness the change.