WESTBROOK – The Westbrook Community Center is getting ready for its community celebration event Friday, in what organizers hope will become an annual tradition, bringing families and cultures together.

“This is something nice, a tradition we want to start,” said Maria Dorn, Westbrook’s director of community services.

The events begin at 11 a.m. with the opening of the Walker Memorial Library book sale, with proceeds to benefit the library. The Westbrook Boutique Thrift Shop will also be open during the day.

Dorn said the event is geared toward “just bringing people together for some fun that doesn’t cost anything.”

The event also kicks off the new season of Family Fun Night. Dorn said during the last school year, families could pay $5 each from 5:30-9 p.m. on Fridays and come for food, games and activities, often organized around a specific theme. Dorn said the center will be bringing the weekly event back for the current school year.

A performance by the Pihcintu Multicultural Children’s Chorus of Portland and a multicultural family dinner put a spotlight on a cultural theme that Dorn said is often a part of activities at the center.

“We’re not a one-color town,” she said. “It’s not far-reaching to get folks in here from different nationalities at all.”

The dinner, Dorn said, is one of many multicultural meal gatherings the center has hosted. Katie Camplin, a community coordinator for People’s Regional Opportunity Program (PROP), a Portland-based nonprofit community support organization, has helped coordinate previous multicultural dinners in the past, starting in early spring.

All will be welcome to Friday’s dinner, too. There is no fee, and no one is required to bring anything, but anyone is allowed to bring dishes to share with others, Camplin said. The concept, she said, is modeled after the traditional neighborhood bean supper, but with the inclusion of any type of food.

“I think the goal of the multicultural dinner was just to have an environment where we celebrate everyone’s cultural heritage, not just one cultural heritage,” she said.

Camplin said the Center for African Heritage, a Portland-based nonprofit cultural awareness group that has an office at the community center, has also been instrumental both in bringing cultures and residents together.

Dawud Ummah, the center’s president, said that the dinners use food as a vehicle to build community, not just in Westbrook, but in the surrounding area, as well.

“One of the things we don’t want to do is begin to separate our communities,” he said.

The multicultural food, he said, attracts immigrants who wish to share culinary traditions with others.

“Most of the people who arrive here (from foreign countries) have an agricultural background,” he said.

Dorn said Friday’s event will also feature games and activities for participants, including use of the gym and the Davan Pool.

Dorn said there will also be two dedications happening. The gym and recreation area of the center near the Davan Pool, she said, will be named the Cornelia Warren Recreation Wing, in honor of the Cornelia Warren Foundation. Dorn said the foundation has donated $750,000 to the center, prompting the dedication.

“Cornelia Warren is the epitome of recreation, so we felt it was fitting,” she said.

There will also be a small ceremony marking the official naming of the entire building the Fred C. Wescott Building, in honor of former mayor Fred C. Wescott. The building, which bore Wescott’s name when it used to be the junior high school, appeared to lose the name when the new middle school was built, and the building transferred over to city hands.

After protests from the Wescott family, the city agreed to redesignate the building the Fred C. Wescott building. Dorn said it would be a quiet and small dedication, as the family did not request a large fanfare.