ALAMEDA

Join the city of Alameda at 2 p.m. Saturday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the city’s new Bohol Circle Immigrant Park. The event will last till 4 p.m. in the park at 2901 Fifth St. and will include remarks and performances by Bohol Circle members, music and light refreshments from Alameda restaurant Sampaguita Fil-Am Cuisine.

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Bohol Circle Inc. is the first and oldest Filipino-American organization in the United States. Founded on Sept. 21,1936, Bohol Circle Inc. was originally created to help Bay Area Filipino immigrants obtain respectful burials in the United States.

After the 1935 death of Telofilo Torregosa, a young Filipino man, seven other area Filipinos felt that the best way to help their community was to build an organization that could serve as a financial safety net in the form of mutual aid should emergencies such as death occur. The organization was named after the Visayan island of Bohol in the Philippines, from which all of the founders came. The “circle” symbolized their struggles by manifesting their bonds as within a circle.

Bohol Circle found its home at 1815 Union St. in Alameda in 1965 after pooling membership money to buy a space to serve as a community for recent Filipino immigrants. At the end of Fifth Street, off Mitchell Avenue and on the Oakland Estuary, the new Bohol Circle Immigrant Park will serve residents of new and existing homes in Alameda Landing and connects the San Francisco Bay Trail to Estuary Park.

— city of Alameda

Canine service group for veterans to visit the USS Hornet

Paws for Purple Hearts will be on board the USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum on Jan. 28.

The organization improves the lives of America’s military veterans who are facing mobility challenges and trauma-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury by providing the highest-quality assistance dogs and canine-assisted therapeutic programs and by building awareness about the important role dogs play in helping veterans on the road to recovery.

They will be on board with an information booth and some of their dogs for visitors to meet. Please drop by and see them, find out what they can do and how you can help or use their services. For more information about Paws for Purple Hearts, visit pawsforpurplehearts.org online.

— USS Hornet

Winter Warming Shelter offers place to rest till April 30

Now open and operating every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Alameda’s Winter Warming Shelter provides a warm place to sleep for those in need along with dinner, breakfast, a shower (on Wednesdays and Fridays), toiletries, clothing and limited overnight storage during the colder winter months ahead.

Guests can also bring one approved, well-behaved pet. The warming shelter will be open through April 30 in Christ Episcopal Church at 1700 Santa Clara Ave. Warming Shelter guests should enter through the Grand Street parking lot.

The Housing Consortium of the East Bay (HCEB), which is operating the warming shelter , also operates Jack Capon Villa on Lincoln Avenue, an 18-unit affordable housing community for low-income individuals with developmental disabilities. Many thanks got to Christ Episcopal Church’s leadership, congregation and volunteers, who continue to fulfill this critical need in our community and who have made a significant monetary contribution to help operate the warming shelter.

Anyone interested in supporting the warming shelter can buy an item on the shelter’s wish list or volunteer their time and support with meals. For more information, call the Alameda Homeless Hotline at 510-522-HOME (4663) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday or call 211 on nights and weekends to access resources countywide. To contact the Alameda Warming Shelter, call 510-832-1382, ext. 123, or email [email protected].

— city of Alameda

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