Images courtesy of We Love Long Beach.
The locally-loved nonprofit organization We Love Long Beach (We Love Long Beach) announced this week that, for its second annual Citywide Breakfast on Saturday, February 20 from 9:00AM to 11:00AM, the goal is to have 100 locations across the city host their neighbors for a community-building morning meal.
The event is organized by We Love Long Beach and hosted by residents who have volunteered to welcome their neighbors to their front yards.
As the first citywide celebration of 2016 and after four successful events hosted the previous year (nine since January 2014), the second annual Citywide Breakfast is expected to exceed all records for number of residents hosting and attendees in total.
This past June, the Citywide Ice Cream Social drew more than 1,800 people to 58 different host locations, and in October, the third annual Citywide Pumpkin Carving and Chili Party had a record 60 host locations, according to We Love Long Beach’s release.
“The community breakfast is what started it all for We Love Long Beach back in 2008, and after years of honing our model and mission, the second annual Citywide Breakfast is poised to be one of our most successful events ever,” stated Scott Jones, We Love Long Beach co-founder and executive director. “We welcome our returning hosts and Block Connectors, as well as new hosts eager to connect with their neighbors, in joining the fun. The support we’ve received from our community and the Knight Foundation in the past year has been phenomenal and we intend to pour that energy back into our effort to increase ‘withness’ in Long Beach.”
We Love Long Beach was awarded $30,000 last summer from The Knight Foundation Grant, a fund with the Long Beach Community Foundation, to provide the funding for two citywide events. The upcoming breakfast is the second event that will benefit from those funds, while the first was the Pumpkin Carving Party in October, according to the release.
To foster hospitality and create positive, lasting relationships among neighbors on every block in Long Beach has been We Love Long Beach’s mission from the start. Leading to safer and healthier communities, We Love Long Beach strives to strengthen communities through increased neighbor interaction, one block at a time.
Attendees of the upcoming Citywide Breakfast are encouraged to use the event hashtag #BreakfastLB to share their experiences across the city simultaneously on social media platforms.
Anyone interested in hosting a breakfast is asked to contact We Love Long Beach at [email protected]. The organization can be followed on Facebook here, on Twitter here and on Instagram @welovelb.