We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Arina Zhirkova a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Arina, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I learned that taking risks in life is great. Yes, the outcome might happen to be not what you expected, but it is one step closer to a goal. At other times, it all goes as planned. When I started Sunny Isles Beach Cleanup, a beach cleanup organization that hosted beach cleanups every week, I didn’t know what to expect, but I was willing to take this risk. It took a lot of research, networking with others, as well as obtaining more organizational and leadership skills to be able to lead a successful cleanup. After a while, my Cleanup started growing from what was a group of my friends to people from different backgrounds and cities coming together to help our earth. That is one I knew that the risk that I took didn’t only benefit me, but it benefited the whole community. After a while, I started partnering with different organizations, especially with the City of Sunny Isles beach, where I did many lectures. I have also given presentations to many schools about beach cleanups and how they can help. There have definitely been obstacles in the way, but it was very worth it. Taking this risk of starting a beach cleanup was definitely one of the best things that have happened to me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Arina Zhirkova, and I am the founder of Sunny Isles Beach Cleanup, a beach cleanup organization that I started when I was 16 years old in August 2020. It was the year of Covid and I began volunteering at beach cleanups starting in July. The organization was called Clean Miami Beach, and I had volunteered at least eight times before I realized that I wanted to make my own organization in my city. I quickly learned more about how I should start my own organization and what the steps to it were. It was more complicated than I had ever thought, but it was worth it because I loved helping the earth and wanted to make a difference. After a while, I was getting many people together to volunteer. What I focused on in my organization was to organize Cleanups 1 to 2 times per week, guide others through the process, make it interesting, and most importantly, help our world. There have been a lot of obstacles that I had to go through, but at the end of the day, I love doing what I do and it brings me joy, so I push through all the problems to the best of my abilities. Some people may think the leading a beach cleanup won’t be as hard, but it’s far more than just buying the supplies. requires leadership, commitment, passion, and organizational skills. I am most proud of creating this organization from the bottom up and getting such a great group of volunteers every week. I want others to know that if you have not volunteered at a beach cleanup, now is the time to give back to our community, beaches, and the world. If you have, I encourage you to come and help out as much as you can. Please follow my Instagram: @Sunny_Isles _Beach_Cleanup for more information on upcoming cleanups.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

The most effective strategy for growing the number of volunteers attending my beach cleanups is definitely Instagram. When I started my beach cleanup, I created an Instagram account,@Sunny_Isles_Beach_Cleanup, and began to publish upcoming beach cleanup flyers and share them with other organizations, so that they can spread the word. Another really great way to grow the number of people that come to your cleanup is to share the flyers at different websites, such as Volunteercleanup.org where people who are searching for beach cleanups can find the closest one to them and attend it. There are a lot of ways where you can spread the word, but the two other main ones would definitely be to have promotional flyers while you’re doing a beach cleanup so that I can hand them out to people walking by, and send it to different schools so that they can tell their students to come and join and join. When I started promoting my beach cleanups in those ways, that’s when I really started to see my organization grow.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Reputation is highly important in anything that you do. I believe that in order to build your reputation, and the way people see you, not only have to act a certain way to get the respect of others, but you have to network, and have many connections. Building a reputation in the beach cleanup world definitely consists of reaching out to other organizations, and inviting them to work together, along with networking with others, and expanding your field of knowledge and people that you know. That is one of the most important lessons that I have learned throughout, leading my beach cleanups, and to this day on, I still continue meeting new people and building great relationships, so that not only do I end up connecting with many people, but I can also keep up my organization’s reputation as well as mine as a leader.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @Sunny_Isles_Beach_Cleanup
• Youtube: Sunny Isles Beach Cleanup- @sunnyislesbeachcleanup9900

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