The annual Love Manteca volunteer day takes place on Saturday, April 25.
Volunteers gather at Crossroads Church, 1505 Moffat Blvd.
This is where check-in starts at 7 a.m. as well as a free breakfast. There is an 8 a.m. rally before people travel to their project sites.
There will also be free T-shirts and more.
Volunteers can register on line at lovemanteca.com.
That is where you will also find various projects organizers enlisting volunteers working together to complete between 9 a.m. and noon on April 25.
While it says online registration will start soon on the home page, you can actually scroll down to specific projects and register to be part of that specific team.
Among the projects are:
*Fire hydrant painting: Join Scouting Unit 828 to paint fire hydrants around Manteca to help them standout in an emergency. Thirty volunteers are needed while five have signed up so far.
*HOPE Family Shelters office landscaping: It involves pulling weeds. Twenty volunteers needed, one registered so far.
*Valley CAPS Union Road: Two projects needed 21 volunteers for planting flowers and weeding as well as washing and detailing two buses and a van.
*East Union Cemetery clean-up: Thirty volunteers needed, two registered to date.
*LOVE INC: Spring cleaning and landscaping work. Fifteen volunteers needed.
*Moffat Boulevard Tidewater tree maintenance. It involves trimming sucker growth and low-hanging branches. Thirty volunteers registered, 25 still needed.
*Spreading bark and city parks: Fifteen volunteers are needed to help spread bark in various playground areas at city parks.
*Raymus House/HOPE Family Shelter: Painting the front Entrance wall and walkway, landscaping, pruning trees, cutting and edging lawn of needed, and pulling weeds. Thirty volunteers are needed.
*Thomas Toy Community Center: A mixture of indoor and outdoor tasks such as light cleaning and organizing, washing windows, trash pickup around the front and back of the building, clearing bark from around the bike rack area, painting the bike rack, and writing thank-you cards for board members and donors. Twenty volunteers needed.
*Valley CAPS Austin Road: Pulling weeds, landscaping plus detailing & washing two buses, four vans and one moving truck. Twenty-five volunteers needed.
*Love’s Treasurers: Helping organize donated household, appliances, and furniture stored in containers for those in need.
*Curb painting: Forty volunteers are needed to join Scouting Unit 828 to paint specific red and yellow curbs downtown to make them stand out.
Other volunteers are needed for check-in, support, and writing thank-you cards to for first responders.
Work is also being done at the Manteca Historical Society.
How community volunteer
day started in Manteca
A similar undertaking to Love Manteca started in 2009.
That’s when Crossroads Church organized a small army of volunteer community labor over a three -hour period dubbed “Taking it to the Streets.”
The volunteers made it possible for more than 300 trees to be planted along the Moffat Boulevard segment of the Tidewater Bikeway.
The city secured the trees but lacked the funding and manpower to plant them.
The upcoming Love Manteca effort has projects designed to have a similar positive impact on the community.
The current effort is an offshoot of “Taking it to the Streets” that was done for a number of years on an annual basis that was organized by Crossroads Church.
Thirteen years ago, “Taking it to the Streets” joined the Love movement throughout the Central Valley as well as elsewhere in California.
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 Modesto” in practical ways. The Modesto effort has been done 12 times since then and added more than 50 cities.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
