Ribbon-cutting at Republic Café highlights work in Chinatown

CSU Monterey Bay students will fan out across the county on Saturday, Oct. 22, to clean up the Chinatown area of Salinas, do restoration work in Natividad Creek Park, collect native seeds on public lands, write holiday cards to service members and help with beautification projects.

The community is invited to join in and lend a hand.

The day of service is part of the national Make a Difference Day, a day set aside to “celebrate neighbors helping neighbors,” according to the organizer.

The university’s Service Learning Institute is one of the sponsors of the event in Chinatown, where volunteers are needed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to help with gardening, painting, landscaping and other tasks. The area to be covered is along Soledad Street, Market Way and Lake Street in Salinas.

A highlight of the day will be a ribbon cutting at the Republic Café at 11:30 a.m., to celebrate the renovation of the building. Environmental remediation and the installation of a new roof are about to get under way, paid for with grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The café was once a bustling restaurant, a gathering place for the Chinese, Japanese and Filipino communities of Salinas. Now, decades after it closed, it's being reborn.

In 2012, the abandoned site on Soledad Street is scheduled to reopen as the Salinas Chinatown Cultural Center and Museum. It will chronicle, preserve and spread the stories of those who lived and worked in the neighborhood through exhibitions, oral histories, artifacts and cultural events. CSUMB students, staff and faculty members from a variety of academic disciplines have been involved in the project since the beginning.

Another university-sponsored service opportunity will take place at Natividad Creek Park in Salinas.

CSUMB’s Return of the Natives restoration education project needs volunteers to remove invasive weeds and pick up trash at the park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The park is located on Nogal Drive in Salinas.

A list of other volunteer opportunities is available here.

For more than two decades, Make a Difference Day has been celebrated on the fourth Saturday in October. It connects people with opportunities to serve, increases the strength of communities and promotes civic engagement. Last year, three million people cared enough about their communities to volunteer on that day, accomplishing thousands of projects in hundreds of cities and towns.

For more information, contact Steven Goings at sgoings@csumb.edu.