Love Turlock coordinator Linsday Plett said this year’s citywide volunteer event coinciding with the last weekend of Turlock Unified School District’s spring break could either be a good thing or a bad thing.

“This is our first time where it's overlapping with the spring break for all of the Turlock schools, and so we're unsure how that might affect our numbers… we already have just about 500 volunteers signed up, and we tend to have a lot of people sign up last minute, so we're optimistic that we will have a good turnout again this year,” said Plett.

The one-day extravaganza first began in Turlock in 2012, designed to meet the needs of the community and impact the lives of residents through volunteer work. The event tackles projects both big and small to show love in a variety of ways, whether it be by visiting seniors, serving food to the homeless, sprucing up a park or even mowing a neighbor’s lawn. Last year saw more than 700 volunteers come out for Love Turlock and complete over 36 projects around town.

Plett has been involved in coordinating the event since 2019, and helped relaunch it in 2021 after a brief hiatus due to the pandemic.

“In 2021 it was definitely a little quieter, [since] 2022 it's actually just continued to grow. We have really been impressed the last couple of years with the number of volunteers,” she said.

There are 37 projects set up for this year’s Love Turlock event, including a brand new Teacher Appreciation project, where volunteers will assemble snack baskets and deliver them to the 20 schools in Turlock.  Each school will receive a basket of goodies along with an appreciation banner signed by all the Love Turlock volunteers at the morning kick off.   

Along with volunteers will do sweep, paint, assemble baskets and create appreciation placemats for senior citizens, Plett said huge need is for skilled individuals to take on leading each project.

“Having key people to help us lead projects is always a real big need,” she said, but emphasized that there is a place for every volunteer.

“We really want people to know that this is an event for everyone in our community, and there are projects for everybody, whether you have mobility limitations or you're super handy with construction type things, there is a project that everyone can participate in…We want as many people as they can to be involved in this day, because that's one of the aspects of it, we are celebrating our community and bringing everyone together, and that's super important, outside of just the projects and the tasks that we're accomplishing,” Plett continued.

Love Turlock will be held April 26. The day will start at 8 a.m. with a rally at Donnelly Park. This is when volunteers will check in with their projects and meet their project leader. Volunteers will then disperse to the many projects planned for the day. The event will close with a thank you lunch back at Donnelly Park at 12 noon.

For more information, visit loveturlock.com.