“Dear Nature.” That’s how students are asked to begin their reflection piece, by writing a letter with nature as their audience. This terrific idea didn’t just sprout out of nowhere. It is among the many brainchildren of Sarah Woods and Bethany Thomas, co-founders of Ecology in Classrooms and Outdoors (ECO). ECO inspires students to care for nature and their local communities through hands-on science education.
In our introductory conversations with Liz Eslinger, the CEO of Write Around Portland (WAP), we learned how the organization fulfills its mission of “changing lives through the power of writing.” We—co-liaisons for this nonprofit—decided the best way to learn more about WAP was to participate in writing workshops ourselves. WAP sponsors a variety of participant-centered writing workshops, including bi-weekly 1½ hour workshops open to anyone in the community. These workshops (currently offered via Zoom, on a sliding scale, $5 to $30 each) provide funding for BIPOC, disenfranchised and incarcerated people with opportunities to express their voices through writing.
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
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
In December, 2018, ninety-nine girlfriends provided five organizations with “Core Mission” awards of $12,200. That’s a pittance compared to the $100,000 the groups originally applied for, but it was a boost nonetheless. Here’s how the Core Mission funds helped the Virginia Garcia Foundation.
The Virginia Garcia Memorial Foundation is the financial and community-support backbone of the Virginia Garcia Health Center. Their 50,000-plus Washington and Yamhill County annual clients speak more than 60 languages and include farmers, small business owners, domestic and childcare workers, and migrant and undocumented workers. They face economic, racial and social barriers as well as challenges to access to health care, transportation, food and housing. Virginia Garcia Health Center and its 600 employees offer a vast list of services to help their clients overcome these obstacles.
State and local policymakers often have a remote relationship with their constituents. But the staff of Virginia Garcia have a “boots on the ground” perspective because they work directly with their clients. They not only assess problems, they find solutions. To give them a voice and tap into their collective power, Policy and Advocacy Officer Felicita Monteblanco designed a five-month training program called “RISE: Reach. Inspire. Support. Engage” to educate Virginia Garcia staff in policy making and advocacy.
Ninety-nine girlfriends’ $12,200 grant helped give rise to R.I.S.E., and the impact is already being felt. At least five R.I.S.E. graduates have joined public boards, councils, commissions and committees, one sought a City Council seat in the City of Newberg and many more are now armed with the knowledge, skills and power to enact real change in their communities.
— Marcy Newton
With the Covid-19 pandemic upending so many social services, we checked in with ninety-nine girlfriends’ 2017 grantee partner Urban Gleaners to see how the agency is weathering the storm. Urban Gleaners’ mission is to re-purpose and distribute excess and wasted food from restaurants, groceries, event venues and businesses to food-insecure families – and, in the process, keep perfectly good food out of the waste stream.
Unfortunately, 85 percent of the agency’s food sources no longer exist. “The pandemic has completely changed what we can do,” says Tracy Oseran, founder and executive director of Urban Gleaners. From running 67 distribution sites that fed approximately 5000 people per week, the organization has had to slice its distributions to food boxes for around 500 families per week.
“It’s heartbreaking – we just don’t have the product,” says Oseran. “The supply chain is disrupted, as you can see by the empty shelves in the supermarket. Our model is based on eliminating food waste, and that has dried up.”
Urban Gleaners is creatively pursuing alternative food sources, including buying produce from farmers who previously relied on restaurant clients. Mainstays like Dave’s Killer Bread and Market of Choice are still contributing, and the agency is also buying through mega-wholesaler Sysco. One-time donations turn up, like 2000 pounds of healthful and delicious sausage that didn’t meet a local meat processor’s standards for retail sale.
In the meantime, Urban Gleaners is distributing food boxes at four summer lunch program sites operated by Portland Parks and Recreation. Oseran continues to seek out other sources of high-quality food to serve the tremendous – and growing – need.
“For the time being we’ll hobble along, and this too shall pass,” she reflects. “We’re Americans, and we like to waste. I have no doubt that we will start wasting again before too long.”
When we do, Urban Gleaners will be there to feed Oregonians.
— Heidi Yorkshire
