Love Laguna Beach, a city-wide volunteer day where residents, businesses, city government, faith-based organizations, and non-profits will unite to make Laguna Beach a better place is this Saturday. Sponsored by Laguna Presbyterian and organized by the Rotary Club, the event started in Modesto, California and has since caught on with Orange County cities like Fullerton and Anaheim. This is the first year Laguna will be hosting the event.
The event’s goal is to provide project opportunities scattered all around the City of Laguna Beach for people of all ages to participate and make a difference. There is no other event designed to collectively bring people together like Love Laguna Beach and next year, Duncan said they hope to make the volunteer day even bigger.
“It’s an event based on doing volunteer projects for the city,” Rotary Community Representative Gail Duncan said. “I love it. I love that we’re able to do a couple of things for the city so they don’t have to do them. It’s just giving back to your neighbor, to the non-profits and to Laguna Beach.”
Love Laguna will start Saturday with a kick-off event from 8 to 9 a.m at Laguna Beach Community and Susi Q Center. Coffee and refreshments will be served while volunteers gather all our project leaders and volunteers for a send-off. Then, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., the crowd will separate to complete different projects.
“There’s quite a few different people doing cookies for those seniors,” Duncan said. “We’re painting the bench benches at Suzi Q, and we’re painting the gazebo out by the ocean where a lot of people get married. There’s a group of Rotarians going out to the pantry and doing some behind the scenes work. Not what they do out front, as in give food away, but maybe packaging some things up for them, which will make it easier for them for the next couple of weeks, especially with Thanksgiving around the corner. There’s a closet at the Friendship Shelter, where they toss clothes that are donated to them, and no one really straightens that closet. Those are just some examples of projects people can take part in.”
Duncan said the event expects a huge turnout, with many volunteer projects already full. However, the public can still sign up for the Main Beach cleanup, historic downtown bungalow docents, creating homemade holiday cards for Laguna Food Pantry families, helping with the initial kick off at the Susi Q and several other projects.
“If was a betting woman, I say we’ve got a couple 100 people involved. But these other cities I referred to that have been doing it for years, years. And again, we’re a smaller city, but they’ve got a couple 1000 people for this event. So it’s something that can grow and I just like how it crosses over and after we have been through elections, you know, different things to just come together and do things for each other.
The Love Laguna Beach kick off event will start at the Community and Susi Q Center at 380 3rd Street, Laguna Beach, Calif. 92651. People are welcome to sign up online or arrive in person on the day to get a volunteer assignment. For more information and to sign up, visit Lovelaguna.org.
