The motto of the Trash Punx is “Cleaning Up Our World, One Piece of Trash at a Time,” and this week, the San Jose nonprofit is showing that it’s serious about the global impact of that statement.

Trash Punx founder Justin Imamura and Conservation Manager Vanessa Rogier left Monday for Kenya, where they are partnering with Sabore Ole Oyie, a Maasai elder and warrior, to clean up Ewaso Ngiro, a small town outside Nairobi. The town — about 60 miles away from the Maasai Mara National Reserve — has a weekly livestock and produce market. But it doesn’t have trash service, Imamura said, and there aren’t even garbage bins.

In addition to a multiday cleanup, Imamura says they’ll create a high school stewardship team, who will be in charge of reminding the community about the importance of taking care of the environment. Imamura and Rogier are bringing along more than carryon luggage — transporting canvas bags of gloves, litter sticks, first aid kits, hand sanitizer and volunteer vests. They’ll also be working with local residents to make garbage cans from scratch — it’s not like there’s a Home Depot nearby to buy them — and will provide funding for a dump truck to haul away trash every month for a year.

“We’re going to keep this town clean,” Imamura said. “It’s a major health issue, and we want kids to be able to walk safely to school.”

While the international trip is launching an effort to support innovators around the world who are doing things to help the environment, Imamura says the Trash Punx are still watching out for San Jose, too. There’s a Guadalupe River clean-up planned for April 1 and an e-waste recycling event on April 22 at Happy Hollow Park & Zoo. You can find out more about these events at www.thetrashpunx.org.

“There’s enough trash here in San Jose to keep us busy for a really long time,” Imamura said, “but we wanted to go beyond our borders to clean up a community that just needs a little adrenaline shot.”

SPARTAN STATUS UPDATE: New San Jose State University President Cynthia Teniente Mattson says she wants to make sure that Transformation 2030, the university’s campus master plan, is still right for the university heading forward. In the first State of the University address she delivered Wednesday, Teniente Mattson said the global pandemic caused disruption that we’re all still experiencing.

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While she says the strategic plan is still relevant, “The shifting landscape forced us to hit the pause button on full implementation of Transformation 2030.” So she wants SJSU to strategically recalibrate the plan. “I’m proposing we revisit our mission, our vision and our values so that we’re all crystal clear about our purpose in a post-pandemic world,” she said. Campus leaders will be part of a summit April 24.

READY FOR THE WEEKEND: The Italian American Heritage Foundation is bringing back its traditional celebration of St. Joseph’s Day, with an in-person event planned for Sunday at the IAHF Hall, 425 N. Fourth St., for the first time since 2019. An 11 a.m. Mass celebrated by the Rev. George Aranha will be followed by a meatless buffet lunch at noon including pasta, frittata, orange salad and desserts. Visitors also will receive the traditional “take home” bag with an orange, a roll or cookie, and a dried fava bean — a Sicilian tradition that dates back centuries.

“The assortment of meatless food is overwhelming,” says Cathy De Maria, one of the organizers. “The desserts are even more overwhelming.”