Students, community offer spirited service
Make a Difference Day: Poly kids, others, spruce up neighborhoods.
By Chad Greene
Staff writer

LONG BEACH -- Green metal letters over the entrance to Long Beach Polytechnic High School spell out a charge for students: "Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve.'

Saturday, more than 250 Poly students made good on the second part of that command by going forth to serve the community as part of the 13th annual Make a Difference Day.

The whine of weed whippers and a cloud of dust emerged from an overgrown alley that runs parallel to 16th Street, just west of Alamitos Avenue. In the alley, hundreds of students wearing white Make a Difference Day T-shirts hauled out a discarded mattress and other trash, raked up weeds and shoveled debris into plastic garbage bags.

"Everybody's contributing. It's just great to see everybody work together,' said Sotheara Chhay, a 16-year-old junior who helped organize the neighborhood cleanup.

"We want to make a difference on this day and, hopefully, get the word out so we get more volunteers next year,' he said.

If national participation figures are any indication, the word has already gotten out. Last year, more than 3 million people participated in Make a Difference Day, which is sponsored by the Points of Light Foundation and USA Weekend Magazine.

Sponsorship aside, observations of Make a Difference Day are generally the result of community-based, grass-roots efforts.

Saturday morning, however, the student volunteers from Poly were more concerned with the roots of the weeds they were pulling from the ground.

"I thought we'd just be cleaning up Poly, but I'm glad we're going out into the community and helping people,' said Karen Peters, a 16-year-old junior.

Cedric Pender, a 15-year-old sophomore, agreed.

"I think it's better to get outside of the campus,' he said.

Only a couple of blocks north of campus, on Lime Avenue, volunteers from the nonprofit organization Rebuilding Together were replacing the water-damaged roof of Eara Marchman's yellow craftsman-style home.

Katy Black of Buena Park, a Rebuilding Together board member, was supervising the work on Marchman's home.

Raising her voice to compete with the roar of the compressor powering the nail guns being used to fasten sheets of plywood to the home's exposed roof joists, Black said that all of the materials needed to complete the job had been donated by ALL Roofing.

While they didn't have any spare shingles lying around their home, Black and her husband, Joe, were glad to donate their time, Joe Black said.

"It's right to give back to the community. It just feels good,' he said. "If something needs to be done, do it.'

Marchman, 72, who is blind, may not have been able to see what the Rebuilding Together volunteers were doing, but she could definitely hear their movements on her roof as she sat in her screened-in porch.

"Sounds like they're hammering,' she said. "I'm just going to sit out here and listen for a while.'

Rebuilding Together makes a difference twice a year by completing projects on the last weekends of April and October, Black said.

In North Long Beach, the Andy Street Owners Association also strives to make a difference on more than one day of the year.

"This is the third cleanup we've done and each one has been more enthusiastically supported by residents, because they can see the change taking place,' said Ian Gee, who owns an apartment building on Andy Street.

After Saturday's cleanup, which lasted from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., LBPD officers blocked off the street for a resource fair that featured employment opportunities, hot dogs grilled by the department's Community Relations Division and children's games set up by the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine's Mobile Recreation Program.

Press-Telegram volunteers also participated in the cleanup.

Gee praised the spirit of community activism that's embodied by, but not limited to, Make a Difference Day.

"It's spectacular,' he said. "It's certainly made a difference in this area.'