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DO U LOVE MANTECA?
Volunteers sought to impact community
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A young participant in a previous Love Manteca event helps spruce up the Tidewater Bikeway. - photo by HIME ROMERO/Bulletin file photo

Wanted: People that love Manteca.
The task: To spend four hours on the morning of Saturday, April 8, doing projects with fellow community members to improve Manteca.
As of Thursday, 125 people gave stepped forward to devote part of that day to helping on a wide variety of projects from painting at Manteca High and cleaning up HOPE Family Shelter yards to sprucing up parks around Manteca as part of the Love Manteca effort
Organizers are hoping for 500 volunteers.
Detail on how to register can be found at lovemanteca.com.
The manual labor projects and the volunteers needed include:
East Union Cemetery cleanup, 60 people
HOPE Shelter yard clean up, 2 spots
Manteca High paint team, 4 spots
Moffat tree basin work along the Tidewater Bikeway, 99 spots
Bark project at Bella Vista Park, 29 spots
Bark project at Curran Grove Park, 38 spots
Bark project at Dutra Park 52 spots
Bark project at Woodward Park, 34 spots
Raymus House shelter for single mothers’ yard cleanup, 2 spots
Taking down Love Manteca signs around town, 2 spots
Leaf mulch for the Tidewater Bikeway, 26 spots
Tidewater tree limb trimming, 34 spots
Canned food collection, 87 spots
Single moms/widows oil change, 7 spots
Lincoln School peaceful playgrounds, 13 spots
Seventeen volunteers are also needed to help with registration and kick-off that will take place at the Crossroads Grace Community Church on Moffat Boulevard between the 120 Bypass and Woodward Avenue.
The website also indicates the projects that are family friendly or little kid friendly.
The Love Manteca is the outgrowth of two efforts: “Taking it to the Streets” that was done for a number of years on an annual basis that was organized by Crossroads Community Church and Love Modesto launched in 2007.
“Taking it to the Streets” provided a significant amount of service to the community with perhaps the highest profile being the planting of more than 300 trees and maintaining them for three years until they were established along the Moffat Boulevard leg.
Three years ago “Taking it to the Streets” joined the Love movement throughout the Central Valley as well as elsewhere in California.
Nearby cities that will also have projects on April 8 are Escalon, Lodi, Modesto, Oakdale, Ripon, Riverbank, Salida, Stockton, Tracy, and Turlock among others.
Love Modesto started with two questions back in 2007: Why is our city on some of the worst cities in America” lists? What if our churches were to suddenly disappear from the Modesto area, would anyone even care or notice?
The first Love Modesto on March 7, 2009. More than 1,200 people showed up to love their city in practical ways. The Modesto effort has been done 12 times since then and added more than 50 cities. Over 70,500 people have been involved — young, old, abled, disabled  people from a church or no church at all. Around 250,000 volunteer hours have been donated. This represents over $6.5 million in service based on formulas found at independentsector.org) that have been given to communities.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com