City Heights Rotoractor Club just completed its first community service project of the Rotary Year - revitalizing the outdoor space of a local coffee cafe to enable them to continue to be a gather place for locals.  
 
Cafeina Cafe in City Heights opened its doors to the community about a year ago. The coffee shop is owned by Andrew Benavides, who grew up in the neighborhood. Since opening, they have provided much more than coffee. Besides the mexican sweet bread and ice cream, Cafeina has opened its doors to local artists and community organizations.
 
City Heights Rotaract's president, Rudy Vargas, frequents the local community coffee shop.  When COVID hit, he realized people lost a place to gather, meet and study when Cafeina transitioned to to-go orders only. Rudy noticed that the outdoor area behind Cafeina Coffee needed some love so he asked Andrew if he'd be interested in partnering in a service project. Andrew jumped at the idea. The goal was to help reestablish a community gathering place not only during COVID, but for years to come.
 
Director of Service, Tristen Cain, rolled up his sleeves and applied for a Rotary Foundation grant to help us match any club contributions to this project. After receiving the generous support, Tristen organized our members in a COVID friendly project, splitting masked members into small groups to tackle landscaping, painting, and bench building. At the end of the day, the place glowed.
 
City Heights Rotaract cannot wait to see the place activated by our amazing community. We are grateful for Andrew for opening his business for this opportunity, our members for all their hard work during this heatwave, the Rotary Foundation for providing us with a grant to make this happen, Brandon Cain for lending his expertise and Linda Pennington for providing tools to make this possible. This is what community looks like!
 
City Heights Rotaract is proudly sponsored by San Diego Rotary Club 33 and Mission Gorge Rotary Club.