Sidewalk Ambassadors: A New Street Roots Outreach Effort

For 20 years, Street Roots vendors have been a steady presence on Portland’s streets, selling a weekly tabloid that gives voice to the concerns of our unhoused neighbors and the people who care about them – and provides the vendors with a small income as well. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, Street Roots stopped printing and selling the paper out of concern about spreading the virus.

But how could vendors replace their income? Street Roots created an innovative Coronavirus Action Team that began paying vendors to do essential jobs during this public health crisis. Over the next five months, more than 140 people received stipends for jobs such as outreach to unhoused people.

Now, thanks to a $50,000 grant from ninety-nine girlfriends, that initiative has become the Street Roots Ambassador Program. “The grant came at just the right moment,” says Raven Drake, Ambassador Program manager. Drake is a former medic who created a medical tent when the pandemic began at the edge of Interstate 5 to care for and isolate virus-stricken people from the tent camps. Drake began to advise the Multnomah County Health Department on how to communicate accurate information about COVID-19 to unhoused people and formed a team to deliver it. During lockdown, the team also delivered mail to hundreds who used the Street Roots address, signed people up for federal stimulus checks, assisted with the U.S. Census and ran pop-up voter registration centers.

Drake’s vision for the Ambassador Program is focused on developing income-producing work for Street Roots members by creating partnerships with organizations like the City of Portland, Multnomah County, Portland State University and the Joint Office of Homeless Services. An early success was conducting a survey on homelessness designed by PSU. Street Roots members’ canvassing resulted in hundreds more survey responses than in previous years, an increase in information that may lead to better public policy.

A contract is pending for hygiene-based surveys for the City of Portland Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, and Drake is also pursuing partnerships with neighborhood and business organizations and others who can use the talents and skills of Street Roots members in communications, de-escalation training, art, theater and storytelling and other fields.

“People on the streets have as many skills and capabilities as anyone else,” comments Drake. “The grant from ninety-nine girlfriends is transformative. We are treating it as a project grant, to expand, diversify and build capacity for our Ambassadors.”

— Heidi Yorkshire

Finding Purpose and Pleasure in the Pandemic

Photo by Deborah Edward

I’m a relatively unruffable person. When COVID-19 lockdown began I got ready. My closest family and I, living blocks apart, figured out how to organize our worlds where they could get groceries for me, I could hang with my 5-year old grandson, and together we could let the story unfold. I started a few good habits, like reading Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” each morning and doubling my meditation time. But time began to work differently, and the wrong things began to creep into my thinking: fear, doubt, despair, alarm, suspicion, grouchiness. So I turned to finding things that could distract me, engage me, inspire me, and allow for action, results and success. And there was ninety-nine girlfriends’ calendar - waiting for me.

When the COVID-19 lockdown began. Ninety-nine girlfriends was in the midst of lots of what I call high-touch membership recruiting--meaning in-person events where we could shake hands and hug. Our calendar of activities  scheduled out the work of my committee – Member Education. We’re charged with presenting programs around an annual learning question as well as offering other favorite programs.  Over the course of four years, the education calendar had settled into a rhythm of a few spring events, a summer break with assorted social activities and then a ramp-up of autumn programming. Wrong calendar for COVID-19.  The prescience of other girlfriends who had friends, family or personal experiences giving them a better forecasting sense about when we’d reopen made it clear quite quickly that in-person activities would not be happening  anytime soon.  

Early in lockdown the Women’s Foundation of Oregon invited  ninety-nine girlfriends to join a zoom seminar about a relief fund for those affected by the early implications of COVID-19. The new Relief Fund was supporting domestic violence shelters needing to find safe alternative housing for their clients, the child care centers losing business but trying to retain jobs and others who were at immediate risk of having to close critical social fabric services. We jumped at the chance, and got a quick lesson in Zoom technology. The event reached more than 150 members. This response showed us there was a thirst for connection, for information and for ways to take action. It provided evidence that we needed to do more. Our Member Education Committee quickly pivoted to embrace the virtual technology. We produced our Discovery Forum online, and  created new summer programs that could be online, but would also be interactive, informational, supportive and fun.

Being a member of an all-volunteer women’s group with a very fluid structure means doing things differently than I did as an Executive Director, a consultant or a college teacher. I was guided by a few maxims that reflect our ninety-nine girlfriends culture and decision-making style:

• Always learning

• Err on the side of generosity

• Strive for consensus, but majority rules

• Recognize that although we all have different lived experiences, we share common values

• Build on strengths

• Diversity in perspectives creates deeper, richer, better results

When the news cycle made me despondent, I signed on to Linked-In and sleuthed the backgrounds and interests of new ninety-nine girlfriends, to find potential candidates to share their passion, expertise or experience in our “Let’s Talk About….” Series.  When I awakened with a sense of impending doom, I’d pop onto my computer and clean up files and folders related to ninety-nine activities. I read up on what was happening across the world in other collective giving circles and supported my colleagues as they created new paths to get things done in our grantmaking and communications. I was lucky that I kept being invited to run a seminar, to answer a question, to speak with a new member – all worthwhile endeavors that could help me feel my agency, my worth, my value, that what I was doing was helping someone else.

Turning my despair to action resulted in a lively calendar of programming for ninety-nine girlfriends this summer. One of the most enjoyable activities was working with Kathy Masarie and her husband Chip to organize our “Unconference” – a delightful medley of online activities one summer Sunday afternoon that invited members to share their passions with other girlfriends, to co-create together and to appreciate the amazing energy that comes from being together. That experience, watching Chip write code to make our Unconference work, inspired me to sign up for an online class to learn the “python” coding language.

This summer I didn’t reach my goals in long-distance bike riding. I didn’t become a better piano player or learn to knit or crochet. My bread baking still falls flat, although my attempts to harvest my backyard fruits and make jam turned out well. My attempts to learn basic computer programming ended in tears. But my ninety-nine girlfriends activities yielded pleasure, pride, and purpose.  

--Deborah Edward

PDX Bridge helps foster youth achieve the dream of a college education

Back in 2016,  ninety-nine girlfriends’ first-ever grant recipient was PDX Bridge. It’s an innovative nonprofit that “bridges” young people coming out of foster care, homelessness and the juvenile justice system – and sometimes all three – from high school through the first year of community college. As of this year, PDX Bridge has guided almost 300 students into Portland Community College and Mt. Hood Community College – impressive, since 50 percent of this group typically does not even graduate high school.

“That first grant was really important,” says Emily Froimson, executive vice-president of the national organization Achieving the Dream, now the umbrella for PDX Bridge. Emily, impressed by the group’s scrupulous grant-giving process, became a ninety-nine girlfriends member herself in 2017.  “The grant helped us set up a citywide initiative that brought together over three dozen partners – such as social service agencies, alternative schools, community colleges, New Avenues for Youth – to build communication, get everybody in the same room, and keep these students from falling through the cracks,” she explains.

The Covid-19 pandemic has heightened students’ unmet needs, for example offering remote services, providing refurbished laptops and funds for food and housing as jobs continue to be lost. “Our students have a real risk of disengagement, of not feeling like they belong in college,” says Emily. “They typically have not done well in traditional schools, and they require more assertive outreach. They are fragile, and over the last decade the support systems have become increasingly fragile. We are expecting more need.”

As part of Achieving the Dream, PDX Bridge works with individual students and community colleges themselves. Recognizing that community colleges are America’s most accessible gateway to better economic opportunity, Achieving the Dream is a network of more than 277 institutions of higher education and other non-profit and foundation partners that champions “evidence-based institutional improvement.” The agency, founded in 2004, describes itself as “the most comprehensive non-governmental reform movement for student success in higher education history, dedicated to helping more than 4 million community college students in 44 states and the District of Columbia have a better chance of achieving their dreams.”

Statistics never tell the whole story, though, so let’s look at one Portland student. She used a $500 student support gift from Achieving the Dream to help with move-in costs so she, her partner and their 18-month-old son were able to leave the shelter where they were living and rent their own apartment. She hopes to work in the medical field and will continue her education at PCC with the support of the agency’s Future Connect scholarship.

That’s a dream on the way to being achieved, and a bridge to a different life. Seeded four years ago by ninety-nine girlfriends.

— Heidi Yorkshire

One Year Update from PDX Bridge Project

The following story updates us on the first year work of our first grantee partner. It is based on the information shared by PDX Bridge with our Impact Team at our year one check-in.

“Just stepping onto a college campus changes the family culture.” (Allison Trowbridge, PDX Bridge student coach)

When the students served by ninety-nine girlfriends’ very first grantee partner started classes at PCC this fall, the campus environment was nothing new. They had four college writing credits and a college guidance class under their belt AND a minimum of six months of personalized support behind them. This support meant that during their senior year of high school, with the help of an experienced teacher / coach,  they enrolled at PCC , set up an online college account, took two evening classes, and waded through the financial aid maze of higher education.

“I realized how important it is to get college credit, so I wanted to have that done. And I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.” (PDX Bridge Student)

If you need a reminder about who these students are, they are youth in foster care, or youth experiencing homelessness, or youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system or youth who experience any combination of the above.  They are students who are vulnerable to a self-perpetuating cycle of neglect, abuse, incarceration, and homelessness. PDX Bridge’s goal is to identify and recruit these students in high school and get them through their senior year and into college. With access to  higher education and a community of support, opportunities multiply, including the possibility of securing a family-wage job and someday providing safe and supportive homes for their own children.

“My college success coach, throughout the whole entire term, she was by my side to help me with all the work and any support I needed.” (PDX Bridge student)

The first group (or cohort) of students piloted the program and taught the team quite a bit.  Fewer students enrolled and fewer students completed the program than predicted, providing valuable information about what’s needed to help a student be successful. PDX Bridge is now providing a 10-week “readiness” training program (using a research-based proven curriculum from USC) to a large swath of students through the network. They have trained 50 practitioners from collaborating partners and 150 students have completed the program. This year’s cohorts are maxed at twenty-five students each, with wait-lists, and with additional support to address the obstacles that were identified in the pilot year (e.g. support for transportation, childcare and more.

PDX Bridge increased its partnerships from twelve to now thirty-five community groups - public and private organizations with shared goals of engaging and supporting vulnerable youth. The Bridge Team is furthering the goal to  improve communication and lessen the overlap and red tape involved when multiple agencies work separately to support the same youth.

If you’re in this program, you know what no support feels like. What I love is that students are super-grateful. There’s a lot of awareness around the value of this kind of support. (Allison Trowbridge, PDX coach)

Says Jeremy, the PDX Bridge Team Lead and Senior Manager at Gateway to College National Network,

“Our outreach and programmatic efforts/adaptations have completely paid off. We have already recruited our Winter quarter to capacity and have a waitlist. Many of these youth came from referrals from the general public schools (PPS mostly) and DHS caseworkers. We also already have over ten youth enrolled for Spring quarter. It was a slow start, but we’re in full stride now.”

And says Glenn Fee, another Gateway Leader:

The momentum that we’ve enjoyed as a result of the 99 girlfriends award has been significant for our efforts here in Portland.

Ninety-nine girlfriends members stepped up individually to help guide PDX Bridge - in so many ways. Special shout outs to Barbara Hilyer, Marnie Frank an Michelle Hynes who are all taking their own time to participate as members of the Ambassadors Council or Steering Committee.

The ninety-niners should feel great about our very first $100,000 dollar grant PDX Bridge and excited about who their next projects will support!!

Update from PDX Bridge Project

by Kari Easton, ninety-nine girlfriends member liaison to our grantee, PDX Bridge

OUR FIRST IMPACT AWARD WINNER IS OFF TO A GREAT START: MEET DESI

Desi, a junior at Helensview High School, is in the first cohort of the PDX Bridge program.

Throughout middle school and her first year of high school, Desi was uninterested in her education. In a large school, it was very easy for her to skip class without anyone noticing, and she often did just that. As a result of judgement that she felt from others, Desi became discouraged and lost confidence in her abilities. In her words, she didn’t allow herself to shine.

In her sophomore year she began attending a smaller school where she felt seen and supported. Desi started to believe in herself again. Once she realized that she could do well in school, she found that she wanted to try harder. She asked family members and people in her school to hold her to her newfound expectations.

So, when her college success coach, Geoffrey Garner, told her about the PDX Bridge, Desi was excited. “It’s free and I can get college credit while still in high school? Who wouldn’t take this?!” Desi signed up for the program right away and already feels that her involvement with PDX Bridge is changing her outlook on education.

As one of the 19 young people in the first cohort of PDX Bridge, Desi credits the program for its unique offering to youth who are affected by poverty and homelessness, including foster and adjudicated youth. PDX Bridge connects students in state care with the wraparound support needed to enroll in college and successfully complete their first year. Now Desi’s plans for the next few years include starting Portland Community College.

“Thank you to each of the ninety-nine girlfriends for your support as we launch PDX Bridge,” shared Glenn Fee of Gateway to College National Network. “We’re off to a terrific start. We’re confident that PDX Bridge addresses a critical need for our community, and we look forward to following these inspirational young people as they grow into significant contributors to Portland’s future.”

On March 15 at Noon, Desi will join two fellow PDX Bridge students at GtCNN’s Gateway Gathering to share the story of her educational journey. We encourage you to register for the event and come hear more from students who we’ve helped support through ninety-nine girlfriends!