Currently, there is no actual Oak Grove Cape Verdean Cultural Center, just a smaller location where the group is headquartered at 393 Onset Ave. But those involved in the organization want to build one.

On Saturday, an end-of summer barbecue was held for the second straight year in hopes of raising funds and awareness for the group's effort to build an Oak Grove Cultural Center. That location will include photographs, art, artifacts, historical data, literature, films, and music, and will have space for classes in Cape Verdean Creole, English as a second language, and college extension courses.

"We're doing quite well. The community has been very generous," said Marian Rose, Cultural Center vice president. "A lot of people here have older relatives who went to the Oak Grove School."

The Oak Grove Cape Verdean Cultural Center Board of Directors and members are working diligently to raise the more than $1 million needed to build a home base at 314 Onset Ave., adjacent where the Oak Grove School once stood.

The Center's dinner dance, which was held on Aug. 2, and Saturday's barbecue were its two major fundraising events of the summer. Aside from selling traditional barbecue food, the group also sold T-shirts that Rose designed with pictures of Cape Verdean food, such as Gufong or Couscous, on the front. Above the food picture reads "Gosta di Kume?" which means "Do you want to eat?" in Creole.

Saturday's event featured a bounce house, a pie eating contest, and bobbing for apples. The Center also honored one of its members at the barbecue, Charles Andrade, for his contributions to the community.

Rose said that the overall message of the Center is to get people to learn about where they came from.

"We want to encourage people to look at their own culture, to talk to their elder relatives," she said. "It's about family sticking together, no matter what culture."