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Love Manteca seeks volunteer help March 23
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During a previous Love Manteca event volunteers spruced up the East Union Cemetery. - photo by Bulletin file photo

It doesn’t seem like much but devoting four hours on Saturday. March 23,  to a variety of projects around Manteca as part of the Love Manteca effort can have a big impact on the community.

A similar undertaking in 2009 harnessing a small army of volunteer community labor over a four hour  period 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 he funding and manpower to plant them.

The upcoming Love Manteca effort has projects designed to have a similar positive impact on the community. However, as of Tuesday they are more than 200 volunteers short of what is needed to successfully tackle all of the targeted projects. 

“Hopefully we triple or quadruple in numbers with this amazing sunshine,” noted Jim Todd who is among the organizers of the day of service.

Volunteers are needed to spend three hours on various projects from 9 a.m. to noon as part of the annual I Love Manteca endeavor. 

Volunteers will gather at 8:30 a.m. at Northgate Park for check-in, kick-off rally, refreshments, a group photo, and information on their project before heading out to the site. To assure a smooth process and to make sure adequate manpower is secured you are asked to go on line at lovemanteca.com to select a project and pre-register.

The website also indicates the projects that are family friendly or little kid friendly. 

Questions or comments can be sent to jimtodd@lovemanteca.com.  


Among the projects volunteers are needed to assist with are:

uSprucing up Tidewater Bikeway plazas.  

uPainting a room at the Second harvest Food Bank. 

uCounty road clean-up along preassigned roads surrounding and in Manteca. 

uSpreading mulch around trees on the Moffat Boulevard leg of the Tidewater Bikeway. 

uCurran Gove Park bark spreading project.  

uDutra Estates  Park bark spreading project. 

uBark spreading at Graystone Park.

uBark spreading at Robert Estates Park.

uLove’s Treasury Ministry.

uPregnancy Help Center facility maintenance projects.

uMobile home community cleaning. 

uBackyard Butterfly flower pot garden. 

uKick off rally hospitality team.  

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 I 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.

Six 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 March 23 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 Modesto” 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