Juan de Dios Chavez Villarino was 10 years old when his grandfather, Cesar Chavez, died in 1993.

Villarino said he learned that his "Tata," the founder of the United Farm Workers union, was a busy man who could heal a bump on the knee by rubbing his hands together. More significantly, Villarino also learned from his grandfather the importance of bettering his community.

So Villarino and his sister, Julia Chavez Villarino, felt obligated to speak Thursday night when seven Watsonville youth volunteers were honored at the sixth annual Cesar E. Chavez Celebration. The siblings took the stage together, though Juan Villarino did most of the talking at the Gene H. Waldo Rodriguez Youth Center.

"In 1965, when my grandfather was taking on the [grape growers], people said it couldn’t be done, but he had that ‘Si Se Puede’ attitude," said the 25-year-old UC Santa Cruz Latin American and Latino-American studies major.

Joshua A. Barba, 16; Darlene DeSilva, 18; Gabriel Perez, 18; Isaac K. Ramirez, 16; Itzel Ramirez, 13; Lilia Lilette Serrano, 18; and Rubi Valdez, 17, were awarded certificates of recognition for community work promoting the values Chavez left behind.

Mayor Kimberly Petersen also spoke at the celebration, a prelude to the Cesar Chavez state holiday this Monday.

March 31 was Chavez’s birthday and the day the UFW was founded, though the UFW isn’t all Chavez left behind when he died at 66. He’s remembered for inspiring poor working people in fields and cities across the nation to fight for social, economic and civil rights.

Those are attributes displayed by the seven youth honored Thursday, event organizers said. Their community involvement stretched from peer tutoring and mentoring to health education and drug prevention.

Valdez, a student at Watsonville High School, hopes to go into medicine.

"I [volunteer] just to help others, to get people more active in the community," she said, "and hoping other people will be inspired by us and realize, ‘I could be up there, too.’"

And though Juan Villarino and his sister stressed the importance of community over the individual, they also said it’s good to honor youth for their selfless work.

"Anything is possible. [My grandfather] was just an ordinary man. I mean he never even finished eighth grade," said Julia Villarino, 22, a student at Cabrillo College.