With the wide variety of neighborhoods that make up Long Beach, full of families whose histories are as likely to reach back to a move from the Midwest to Iowa-by-the-sea as they are to have arrived in the 1970s having fled the Khmer Rouge, its nearly impossible for any one resident to know the city as a whole. But the breadth and diversity of the city hasn’t kept siblings and founders of We Love Long Beach, Robin and Scott Jones, from working to know all of the place they’ve called home for the twenty-something years of their lives — neighbor by neighbor, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Founded in 2008, We Love Long Beach is a non-profit community organization that grew out of a breakfast for fifty of Robin and Scott’s neighbors, organized around the simple goal of having everyone get to know each other. Scott recalls on their website (welovelb.org) that “After that first event, one of my neighbors actually hugged me goodbye. I was surprised and couldn’t stop thinking about how little I knew about each of them; who they are, what they do, what makes them happy and what their needs might be.” Through that experience, the impetus for We Love Long Beach was born.

We Love Long Beach has gone on to have many more neighborhood breakfasts and dinner parties, as well as larger community barbecues with entertainment provided by local bands and artists. The non-profit also runs a club at Wilson High School, geared towards fostering the development of student volunteers.

Director Scott Jones describes their diverse and communityminded programs as having the goal of wanting “to allow people the opportunity to get to know one another/build a relationship with one another, so that we can share ourselves with each other. Whatever that might be (a skill, an idea, a craft, wisdom, a story, or pure compassion), that is what we are about.” And with a booth at what seems to be every event around town, from Stroll and Savor to car shows, We Love Long Beach is constantly reaching out into the community themselves, meeting new people and coming to understand the niche cultures that exist within the city.

Just over a year old, the organization is in what they describe as a getting-to-know-each-other phase with Long Beach. And as they begin to better understand the people, the neighborhoods, their interests and needs, We Love Long Beach will be able to organize events and offer resources that best respond to the city.

Says Scott, “We want to know the people and the things that are going well in our city, and encourage and celebrate those things. We want to know the needs of people and neighborhoods in the city in order to begin to think of new ways to fix those things. Some are easy fixes, others will take a lifetime to begin to address, but We Love Long Beach is designed, we hope, for the long haul.”

Having witnessed the good they’ve done so far, we hope they’re around for the long haul too.





Stop by any Male Academy class and you will see high school student leaders at work. You’ll see peer tutoring and exercises to build selfesteem, as well as discussions on the admission requirements to LBCC or CSULB.

The program also includes positive learning activities, such as field trips to the Museum of Tolerance and the UCLA college fair followed by a football game — empowering moments for students who may have never before left home.

Now in its first full year, the Male Academy is a Long Beach Unified School District program that works to increase the graduation rate of 200 underrepresented, promising male students, allowing them to develop strong academic and leadership skills.

Based on a similar program in Chicago, the Male Academy was created by school principals and Superintendent Maggie Webster to address the widening achievement gap faced by some African-American and Latino male students.

Its middle school counterpart, the Male Math Academy, develops algebra skills and prepares students for high school and college. It was established as part of Superintendent Chris Steinhauser’s Academic and Career Success Initiative, under the direction of Dr. Gwendolyn Mathews, Assistant Superintendent of Middle and K-8 Schools, and Frank Gutierrez, Gear Up Program Administrator.

Both programs are collaborations between CSULB, district administrators, counselors, and curriculum leaders. While all six Long Beach high schools have Male Academy programs, Millikan and Jordan High Schools have built the Male Academy into their class schedules. Other schools structure the program as lunch-time or after-school clubs.

For middle schools, the Male Math Academy has 220 student participants across 11 campuses, and meets twice a week after school. The emphasis is on algebra-readiness, guest speakers who are outstanding role models, and family outreach. “One of the studies we had looked at was how boys learn differently, and specifically, that they benefit tremendously from hands-on learning experiences,” says Sam Platis, Administrative Assistant to the LBUSD Middle and K-8 Schools. “We knew we had to get them ready for college in greater numbers because the state is requiring algebra proficiency.”

And the program has delivered success. “I think it had a great impact and it encouraged him to go to college and be more educated,” said Anna Jordan-Wade, parent of a Male Math Academy student. Another student attributed his progress in math, “…from an F to a B…” to participating in the Male Math Academy.

The high school Male Academy program has seen marked success in its pilot year, with increases in school attendance and test scores, including students whose GPAs have gone from less than 1.0 to 2.5 and higher.

The program even has impacted other areas on campus. “Students have changed the culture at some school sites so at lunch time you don’t have that racial tension we had before,” says Quentin Brown, LBUSD Male Academy Facilitator. “Now you see them eating lunch together, supporting each other and saying, ‘No, this guy is cool.’ So when other students see African-American and Latinos together, they are now the leaders saying, ‘We are here to be educated so that we can better our lives and make our contribution to our community’.”

“We love the numbers we keep track of — GPAs and attendance,” Brown continues. “But I think when you see a student who inside has made a decision to stop being involved in negative activities and start being involved in positive activities, it really has an effect. It not only helps the school and the community, but also the city.”





It will be a busy day at Mayra’s Drive-Thru on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The market’s parking lot will be filled with tables, chairs, and turkey balloons, as owners Ramon and Martha Serrano host 600 of their neighbors for a free homemade Thanksgiving dinner.

Located on Martin Luther King Blvd., this will be the sixth year the Serranos have extended the invitation to everyone in the neighborhood.

“We started doing this because we found out a lot of families didn’t have money for a turkey dinner,” says Serrano. “A lot of people here live by government stamps and benefits.”

Mayra’s holiday celebration is known for the quality of the food as well as the generosity of its owners, and the entire neighborhood looks forward to the meal. “Everybody knows about the dinner, but we remind them anyway,” he says. “We put up a little sign that we’ll be serving Thanksgiving traditional dinner plates, and we tell them too, ‘Don’t forget Sunday!’ and that usually gets a big laugh.”

Originally from Mexico, the Serranos met in Long Beach and, for the past 15 years, have owned Mayra’s Drive-Thru, named after their daughter. They knew they wanted to give back to the neighborhood in some way, but didn’t exactly know how. So six years ago, they decided on a Thanksgiving feast, originally serving 250 plates of turkey with all of the trimmings, and each year the number of dinners has steadily grown.

Mayra’s dished out 550 turkey dinners last year, with the line extending from the parking lot on Martin Luther King Blvd., around the market, then continuing down 20th Street.

This year they plan to prepare 16 turkeys, all cooked at a local bakery. Martha and her sisters, Leticia and Irene, will make four huge trays of three different side dishes — macaroni and cheese, vegetables, and a fruit jam.

Irene and her husband Salvador Davalos, a professional chef, also prepare the mashed potatoes and gravy. The Davalos family will peel and cook 100 pounds of potatoes to make the day’s most popular side dish, along with homemade gravy.

With the help of a neighbor who cooks the greens, all of the food is prepared fresh, meaning the Serranos are up most of the night before. But they say it’s well worth the effort.

“Everybody says the food is excellent, mainly because everything is made from scratch,” says Serrano, of the meal that is served to their guests buffet-style by family members, including daughter, Mayra, and son, Raymond.

For the Serranos, this yearly Thanksgiving dinner is more than keeping up good business relations with the neighborhood. “A lot of people don’t have the money to enjoy a plate at this time,” he says. “But number one for us is to give back to the community. It’s for the neighborhood, because they support us every year — that’s the main thing — because we believe in giving back.”