Organizers gear up for Love Costa Mesa, Love Newport Beach days

Volunteers will be hitting the streets Saturday in two local cities to participate in Love Costa Mesa and Love Newport Beach days — annual events that aim to promote community engagement.

Both events are facilitated by Trellis International, a nonprofit headquartered in Costa Mesa that works to increase collaboration between church leaders, businesses and city leadership to better their respective communities. It will be the second year Newport Beach has been involved and the seventh year for Costa Mesa.

Rallies will be held at their respective city halls at 8 a.m. before volunteers head off to work on their assigned projects until noon.

Planning for this year’s “Love” days started in January, and about 40 projects have been identified for Newport Beach and 50 for Costa Mesa. The work includes such tasks as landscaping beautification, meal drop-offs, helping seniors, painting and more. Each project has a specific cap for the number of volunteers it can use. As of Thursday afternoon, 145 volunteers had signed up to work in Newport Beach and 500 in Costa Mesa.

Isabel Carpenter, director of operations and volunteer engagement for Trellis, noted the majority of the sign-ups tend to come in the days running up to the event, including Friday and Saturday morning.

“I think there’s more engagement [for Love Newport Beach] this time around,” Carpenter said. “We have probably about twice the community partners hosting projects this time. Last time, a lot of our community projects were either through the city itself or a couple of our partner churches. We have about five or six community partners hosting projects this year,” said Carpenter.

In Costa Mesa, organizers focused on identifying what their community partners were dreaming of for their sector of the city and pairing them with another organization that was willing to make that happen.

“Our whole goal is really to increase the value and the sense of community pride in your city specifically,” Carpenter said. “A lot of people in Orange County kind of view it all as ... ‘Well, it’s beautiful and there’s sunshine and the beach,’ but we really believe that cities really matter and your local community really matters.

“Whether you live, work or play in Newport Beach [or Costa Mesa], reinvest your time into the community that you’re a part of.”

For more details or to sign up for Love Newport Beach Day, visit lovenewportbeachca.org. For Costa Mesa, visit lovecostamesa.org.