Love Your Block Creates Lasting Change in West Long Beach

Big ideas and community collaboration are making a lasting impact in West Long Beach through Love Your Block, a resident-led initiative that empowers neighbors to transform their communities one project at a time.

This year, four Love Your Block mini-grant projects focused on improving air quality, enhancing neighborhood spaces and promoting healthier transportation choices. Together, the projects brought residents, schools, nonprofits and City partners together to create cleaner, healthier neighborhoods.

At Cabrillo High School, the Breath of Fresh Air project encouraged students to make healthy choices while promoting safe e-waste disposal. Students transformed 24 vape disposal bins into colorful works of art featuring positive messages about health and environmental stewardship before participating in a vape exchange event that collected 27 vaping devices. Several of the student-designed bins will remain at local schools to continue promoting awareness and responsible disposal.

The Community Garden project transformed the garden at Stephens Middle School into a welcoming educational space with new benches, raised planters and fruit trees. Community volunteers also participated in composting workshops and received seedlings to help start or expand gardens at home, encouraging healthy living long after the project was complete.

Neighborhood beautification was another major focus. Through Legacy in Bloom, volunteers planted 50 trees and removed approximately 150 pounds of litter, helping expand the urban tree canopy while creating a cleaner and more inviting neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the Westside Clean & Green project united 51 volunteers for a community cleanup across three West Long Beach locations. Together, volunteers removed nearly 19,000 pounds of trash and debris, demonstrating the power of community partnerships to improve public spaces.

The projects were made possible through the Love Your Block Mini-Grant Program, supported by the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. The program provides funding and technical assistance to help residents develop creative, community-driven solutions to local challenges while advancing the City's Westside Promise Initiative, a long-term effort to improve quality of life throughout West Long Beach.

As these projects continue to benefit neighborhoods across the Westside, Love Your Block is already looking ahead, with even more resident-led ideas and community improvements planned for later this year.