Photos by Samuel Lippke
10:30am | There is more to him than just the beard. But at the same time, it’s more easily associated with community involvement than the person wearing it.
He created the local non-profit organization We Love Long Beach and bestowed upon it the inspiring motto: “To know and serve the People, the Neighborhoods, and the City of Long Beach.” He also guided We Love Long Beach through an important year of expansion, and continues to spread the organization’s deeds as much as its reputation.
But again it’s the beard that people recognize almost immediately. That’s fine with him, as long as it makes people think of assisting others and fostering love and support for our city. His smiling image along with his nearly-permanent sunglasses (and again that beard) have graced almost everything that We Love Long Beach touches. It’s become not only a jolly logo but an icon of the effort to bring Long Beach back to personal relationships.
For bringing tens of thousands of Long Beach residents (and nearly 30,000 fans on Facebook) together in a way that has never been done before; for bringing people from all corners of the city to meet their cross-town neighbors at one of his many breakfasts; for creatively involving neighborhoods in community-changing art projects and providing young people a place to study for an exam with his after-school assistance; for taking huge strides to help re-invent the process of creating new relationships; and, doing so by laying the groundwork for a master plan on how to love Long Beach, Scott Jones, founder of We Love Long Beach is the 2010 Long Beach Person of the Year.
The year 2010 was a big one for Scott Jones and his non-profit organization We Love Long Beach that he founded two years ago with the help of his sister Robin as Director of Events, and their longtime friend Adam Ferry as Director of Communications. We Love Long Beach has blossomed into new pursuits and areas of the city that turned a small-time neighborhood operation into one of the largest and most influential, sought-after groups in the city. The way they did it has not only raised eyebrows, but also laid a blueprint for the future of non-profit organizations to grow rapidly and make real, on-the-ground change.
We Love Long Beach saw 2010 as a year to expand and succeed by forming partnerships throughout the entire city. An alliance with the Arts Council of Long Beach led to programs that promoted arts among both youth and the local Cambodian community and a partnership with Long Beach City Councilmember Robert Garcia brought spirit and color to the depressing state of the Press Telegram building downtown. Working with Councilmembers Dee Andrews and Steven Neal brought We Love Long Beach’s signature community breakfasts away from Belmont Shore and into more neighborhoods like a recent event at Houghton Park. A partnership with Farmer John has also provided them with more sausage to bring to the party. A call from the Mayor’s office connected them with Food Finders, and a joint effort is underway with We Love Long Beach to raise more than 100,000 pounds of food for the needy this holiday season.
“It’s nice to work with people in the city who understand who they are so we can play the roles that we play,” Jones says. “We’re not trying to be something that we’re not. We Love Long Beach is not trying to be the Arts Council. I look at the city like the Lakers; each person brings a role, and that’s what we are trying to do in Long Beach.”
On a personal level, too, 2010 was a year of excitement and change for Jones. He appeared on two television shows, the ABC game show Wipeout and a tour of his personal favorite Long Beach eateries on a special Eye On L.A. Those shows gave him a chance to show off the brand, but bigger personal changes came when he left his job teaching Sunday school to work for AmeriCorps, connecting neighbors in the downtown Wilmore City community.
“I want to relate and connect with everyone in the city, and understand better where everybody is coming from,” Jones says. “For me it’s not about a project, it’s not about an event. It’s about relationships and friendships and what We Love Long Beach is trying to create. We’re not trying to create more events. We’re trying to create meaningful relationships that because friendships, and friendships that come out through time and through trust. In order for me to wave that flag, I need to be someone stepping into it as well.”
For a man who grew up and lived nearly his entire life in Belmont Shore, the gangs and poverty of his new downtown Long Beach neighborhood bore a sharp contrast, and he admits that it’s difficult to adjust especially when there is a language barrier with many neighbors. But within weeks, he had helped organize new after-school study and play programs with the local children and his mantra of connecting with his surroundings is stronger than ever.
“This year we defined who we are: We are about neighborhoods, about allowing neighbors to get to know each other,” Jones says. “This award is about me but it really is about We Love Long Beach. It is about my sister [Robin] and Adam Ferry, they’re really the backbone of this organization. They’re my MVPs.”
At this point, forming a partnership with Jones and We Love Long Beach translates to nearly instant street-cred, as City officials and departments have gladly welcomed their participation as a kind of informal endorsement. The Long Beach Post is no exception. When the District Weekly folded earlier this year and took We Love Long Beach’s community column with it, the Post approached Jones and the team about bringing their efforts to our site, and we are proud to say that they accepted.
What’s more exciting than anything that Jones and We Love Long Beach have accomplished so far is the rapid pace at which they’ve grown, and their urgency to tackle even more frontiers. A new, more interactive web site is on the horizon that Jones says will allow non-profits across the city to connect with each other. And after three years of conducting weekly “Good Neighbor” meetings with students at Wilson High School, Jones and his team are trying to bring the program district-wide. The goal is simple: To continue the We Love Long Beach mission of “To know and to serve,” and to teach youth what it means to be a neighbor and a citizen. He’s received interest from several schools and says, “2011 will be the year of education.”
Jones – and therefore We Love Long Beach, as an extension – doesn’t do anything unless he’s sure that the time is right. “With the breakfasts,” he says, “which have become our staple, we wanted to get it where we knew what we were doing in Belmont Shore so we can begin to extend it to these other neighborhoods in the city.” And Jones wouldn’t bring his student neighbor program to Cabrillo or Millikan unless it was working at Wilson.
“I thought I knew the city really well,” Jones says. “But I’m also very humbled by how much there is to learn still about this city and the people in it. There are a lot of relationships to be built, there are a lot of people to connect with still. And that’s what’s exciting, there’s still a lot of work ahead.”
The fabric of community is a powerful thing, and over the last year Jones proved that his organization is intent on strengthening that power in Long Beach fueled only by motivation (no one takes a salary from We Love Long Beach). With an organization like that, and a spirit like Jones at the center, Long Beach is a better place.
