If you've ever seen a group of kids cleaning up that graffiti, it might inspire a bit of pride and confidence in your community.

That's the idea behind Kids Helping Kids, a community based organization created by Peter Montoya, one of the 2009 9Kids Who Care.

Peter arranged a day of service during the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday in January, asking all of his Adams City High School peers to give an hour or two to help clean up graffiti in their community. Close to 20 volunteers showed up, geared up and ready to repaint several walls that had recently been tagged by graffiti vandals.

It was a much more impressive turnout than Peter had expected.

"Sometimes, you ask 40 or 50 people to show up, and you'll only have 4 or 5 actually volunteer," said Peter. "But today looks much better."

Commerce City spends more than $85,000 a year cleaning up graffiti. They've found that if they paint over it within a week, it's less likely the tagger will ever return. That's where Peter's community service group comes in.

With about 10 teenagers under his watch, Peter heads over to a neighboring church (with permission) to paint over a fresh batch of tags. After about an hour, the group painted over the tags and moved onto sweeping and touching up the area.

The idea, according to Peter, is to let the community know that the kids are, indeed, all right.

"We're trying to discourage tagging and put a better confidence in the community," he said. "When you see the whole community is trying to make it better, you feel like you're giving something back when you take part in just a small amount of volunteering."

Since its founding, Kids Helping Kids has grown into an international non-profit organization that promotes kids to help other kids and give back to their community. Peter works daily on the program, making calls and setting up meetings at schools and in neighborhood community centers.

Please join us in congratulating Peter Montoya, a 2009 9Kid Who Cares.