Grantee Partner Pivots Amidst COVID-19
April 2020

As the coronavirus spread our Liaisons and Grants Steering Committee worked quickly to check in with our grantee partners. How can we best support them as this crisis unfolds? We offered to change their grant agreements, including options of removing project funding restrictions, paying out any remaining grant money early, and relaxing reporting requirements. We were met with much gratitude. And we are confident that our partners are continuing their important work making impactful changes in our communities. While the future remains too uncertain for some to fully articulate the changes they may need to undertake during the crisis and recovery, we did receive some exciting updates that we wanted to share. Here is what some of our current Grantee Partners shared:

Ecology in Classrooms & Outdoors shared that with the closure of the schools, their program delivery as planned is not possible at this time. However, with the shifts toward online educational content ECO is poised to support teachers and students in a unique way. ECO plans to work on creating engaging, inquiry-based videos that teachers can show directly to their students. In that way, ECO will be able to facilitate both teacher professional development and support while also providing students fun and informative videos with content delivered by experienced educators

Open Signal reported that they are definitely looking at least a change in timeline, since it's unclear when they’ll be able to move forward with film production work originally scheduled for the spring and summer.

Rose Haven reported that they continue to serve guests weekdays from 9-12 with breakfast, lunch, tents, tarps, supplies, emergency clothing, bathroom access and all the usual Rose Haven love (from 6ft :-). They believe the mental health program is still an important offering at Rose Haven, however it is on hold for a few months as they are trying to limit direct contact with guests.

Oregon Tradeswomen shared that their team has moved monthly social hours to virtual networking events, they are working on implementing online training for the classroom portion of the curriculum, they have implemented a resource page to support workers and a stronger online presence to support tradeswomen dealing with layoffs or health challenges on the jobsite.  Finally, OTI is hoping to be able to help be part of the support to our houseless community through building tiny homes – stay tuned for an update on that!

Red Lodge Transition Services reported they have started a cottage industry sewing high quality protective masks for sale and are paying members of their community to make these masks. They are using some of our funds to help community members needing assistance with rent, food, and employment.  Red Lodge is seeking used laptops to help with other services for their community