For thousands of hours, a group of devoted Vietnamese parishioners at St. Rose Church have volunteered their time—often sacrificing evenings and weekends after exhausting workdays—to construct an attractive new plaza on the church’s north side. Their efforts have transformed the space into a beautiful addition that benefits both the parish and Chelsea as a whole.
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Thai Nguyen dumps a fresh pile of sand to be flattened out before the final few yards of brick are placed to finish the promenade.
The project commenced in early April under the leadership of Cuong Pham, who heads the substantial Vietnamese community at St. Rose. Tom Tran, serving as project manager, emphasized the volunteers’ dedication: “All of these people who have been working here all of these months are doing this voluntarily to make the church better and to make the city better,” “They put their heart and soul into the project. We have done this project not for just our church, but for the whole city of Chelsea.”
Every Saturday, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., volunteers arrived to clean and prepare the site. Throughout the summer months, many returned on weeknights as well, working under flood lights to position stones, construct a raised flower wall, and compact the ground in readiness for the plaza.
The workforce typically included approximately 20 men, though weekend participation sometimes reached around 50 workers. “To get this done, over the last two months we’ve been coming out Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday,” explained Pham. “We work all day Saturday and then from 5-10 p.m. on the weeknights. We think we need to grow and have more festivals and community events.”
Supporting this effort, a group of women organized meal service, preparing and delivering hot soup and noodles each evening and on Saturdays so workers could take breaks and eat on-site. “The women are volunteering to bring food,” noted Pham. “Every day we work here, we have a volunteer group to cook the food for us. It’s the whole community working on this in different ways.”
The church community will gather for a ribbon cutting and celebration on the completed plaza on Nov. 6.