Volunteers can now sign up for a wide variety of community improvement projects in Newport Beach Oct. 15, during the first-ever “Love Newport Beach Day.”
“It’s a great way to be more engaged with your community, to renew relationships with your neighbors, and contribute to the renewal of Newport Beach,” Mayor Kevin Muldoon said in a press release.
The day was initiated by a larger movement championed earlier this year by the mayor, called “Renew Newport,” by connecting volunteers with churches, businesses, non-profits, and city leaders.
“I’m very excited for Renew Newport’s first volunteer day,” Muldoon said. “I encourage everyone to participate.”
Breakfast will be offered before the day’s activities begin, starting at 8 a.m. at City Hall, 100 Civic Center Drive. Volunteer projects will take place from 9 a.m. until noon and participants wearing their volunteer t-shirts will be offered discounts at some Newport Beach restaurants.
Signing up early is recommended for volunteers to choose from the event’s over 40 projects, including helping elderly neighbors with landscaping, writing encouragement letters for seniors, and providing breakfast for firefighters, among many other projects.
“The hope is that this day will start a movement in the city of Newport Beach,” Reina Cuthill, of the nonprofit Trellis International—an organization that coordinates with local churches to serve the community and which is organizing the event—told The Epoch Times.
Cuthill said the idea for a volunteer day came about by a group of pastors in January, during one of their weekly prayer groups.
“A lot of these movements start this way,” she said.
Newport Beach isn’t the first city to have a volunteer day, according to Cuthill.
“Love Costa Mesa Day” was also started by Trellis, and now functions separately from the organization.
“We help encourage, empower, and support these movements, in hopes that they would become independent,” she said.
Cuthill said her organization plans to collaborate with all 34 cities in Orange County to help initiate similar projects.
She said the organization’s first and foremost goal is to help churches collaborate better, and Newport Beach’s volunteer day is a first step towards that.
