The county embarked on its 10th annual Cesar Chavez Service Week on Monday by encouraging county employees and residents to honor the late labor leader by volunteering, donating and learning more about him.

County employees on Friday will head to Dockweiler State Beach in Playa del Rey to join in a major beach cleanup as part of the week’s service projects. Public workers also will help out with a food drive for the county’s poor and homeless in a partnership with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. They also will be planting trees, painting fences and gardening at local community parks and tutoring students at county library Homework Help Centers. The county library also has posted a Cesar Chavez curriculum for educators at this Web site.

Chavez was a labor organizer and civil rights activist who sought better working conditions for migrant farm workers through nonviolent means. He was a co-founder of the union that later became the United Farm Workers and his slogan "Sí, se puede" (Spanish for "Yes, it can be done") remains a rallying cry for Hispanic civil rights movements.

Chavez died in 1993 and was posthumously awarded the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. Many parks, schools, cultural centers and streets have been named in his honor in cities across the country.