Vision into Action (VIA) Grants

2009 COMMUNITY ACTION GRANTS PROGRAM

Vision into Action Recognizes Grassroots Projects aligned with Portland’s vision through the Community Action Grants Program

Portland, OREGON – The Vision into Action (VIA) Coalition has chosen 8 dynamic community groups to receive Community Action Grants of up to $20,000. Selected from a pool of 88 applicants, recipients were chosen based on their ability to help advance the community’s vision articulated through visionPDX, the largest city-wide visioning process in Portland and the nation.

The programs chosen for funding embody the shared values Portlanders identified through the visionPDX process. Awardees were selected by members of the VIA Coalition, a broad, community-led alliance of organizations, businesses, neighborhoods, government agencies and individuals acting collectively and collaboratively to ensure implementation of Portland’s community vision.

The award-winning projects range from entrepreneurial training for youth with disabilities to the sustainable renovation of a building and site to create a family-friendly, community gathering space. Projects were selected in each of the “Five Elements” identified through the visionPDX process: Built Portland, Economic Portland, Environmental Portland, Learning Portland and Social Portland. In addition, six equally weighted selection criteria were used to evaluate proposals to ensure that they:

1. Actively advance the community vision articulated in Portland 2030: a vision for the future;
2. Use innovative approaches to realize our shared vision for the future;
3. Tap into existing community support;
4. Impact as many people as possible given the scope of the project;
5. Be short-term in duration and long-term in effect; and
6. Will advance community partnerships.

2009 VISION INTO ACTION AWARD RECIPIENTS

Built Portland Recipient

Tabor Commons / Café Au Play: Tabor Commons Renovation – $12,060
Estimated number of people engaged: 50 volunteers and hundreds of families who visit the café

The Tabor Commons Renovation project will result in a beautiful, environmentally innovative community gathering space. This project has already brought neighbors and nonprofit organizations together around building, depaving and fundraising, and this grant will help complete the renovation. Directly across from Atkinson Elementary school, Tabor Commons and Café au Play will provide a vital, safe and cross-generational meeting space for the neighborhood and a model that other groups can follow.

Economic Portland Recipients

Incight: Youth Oregon Disabilities Association (YODA) Project – $17,550
Estimated number of people engaged: 100 youth with disabilities

A truly groundbreaking project, YODA provides entrepreneurial training to youth with disabilities. This program offers empowerment and possibility to often underserved youth through interactive workshops conducted by successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople who also have disabilities. Utilizing fun, interactive methods, YODA connects to youth to skill sets in a meaningful way, culminating in the development and launch of a business idea at a community showcase event.

Community Energy Project: Community Marketing and Jobs Skills Development – $15,000
Estimated number of people engaged: 20 directly; outreach recipients in the thousands

Community Energy Project addresses many issues at once in this unique program: providing job skills training to people in need, offering money saving weatherization tools to low-income households and spreading awareness about energy conservation. Participants will gain knowledge in marketing, public speaking, green technology and customer service to diverse constituencies. As the sole local retailer of a high-quality, hard-to-find low-cost weatherization product, this nonprofit organization aims to increase sales to those who can afford it while making the resource more readily available to households that cannot.

Environmental Portland Recipients

Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon: Environmental Policy Project – $10,000
Estimated number of people engaged: 300

Though extensive outreach and educational forums, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) will engage Portland’s diverse Asian and Pacific Islander communities in dialogue surrounding environmental and green economy issues. This effort will result in the training of grassroots community leaders to become vocal participants in local environmental and economic development policy decisions.

Buckman Community Association: Buckman Community Composting Project – $1,000
Estimated number of people engaged: 80 neighbors

Seeking to transform an environmental hazard into a valuable community resource, the Buckman Community Association will work with both renters (80% of the targeted neighborhood) and homeowners to create a neighborhood composting site. This effort will not only serve to reduce household waste by providing compost to local residents, it will also facilitate community discussion and cohesiveness through a shared learning process.

Learning Portland Recipient

Friends of Portland Community Gardens: Vestal Community and Learning Garden - $17,000
Estimated number of people engaged: 800

An excellent example of a community-led effort to create green space, Vestal’s project turns a parking lot in Outer East Portland into a vibrant community garden and connects the culturally diverse Vestal Elementary School student body with neighborhood residents. Construction will result in both shared garden plots and an educational garden used by the school.

Social Portland Recipients

The Iraqi Society of Oregon: Iraqi Social Adjustment and Integration – $15,000
Estimated number of people engaged: 2,000-3,000 Iraqi refugees in Portland

This project provides resources for the 3,000 Iraqis already living in the Portland area as well as the 2,000 Iraqi refugees forecast to arrive in the next two years. The Iraqi Society of Oregon will help integrate the Iraqi population into Portland life through an approach that addresses basic skills, the need for community, and reconciliation. This holistic method will help empower new arrivals while circumventing the conditions that often lead to depression and isolation among this community.

Street Yoga: The Mindful Caregiver Program – $18,000
Estimated number of people engaged: 90 parents, social service staff and caregivers

This project addresses the root causes of social issues by providing cutting-edge mindfulness and compassionate communication tools to 90 social service staff, parents and caregivers, and children grappling with cycles of abuse, extreme poverty, homelessness and/or involvement with foster care. An outstanding example of social sustainability, the Mindful Caregiver Program recognizes that homelessness, abuse, and negative parenting practices are perpetuated when underlying trauma fails to be addressed.

HONORABLE MENTIONS - VIA COMMUNITY ACTION GRANT FINALISTS

Honorable Mentions – Built Portland

Columbia Slough Watershed Council: Watershed Education Center
Funds needed for this project: $14,800

Columbia Slough Watershed Council operates an environmental education program at Whitaker Ponds Nature Park where people of all ages learn about the diversity of life fostered by the slough. Currently classes are held in an 800 square foot house that is split into offices and a classroom. Because of its size, the capacity for classes cannot meet the demand. Columbia Slough proposes to remodel an old house across from the current site. The new site has over 1600 square feet and will allow the educational programs to reach a much wider audience. Plans for the site include a larger classroom that could accommodate a full class of students as well as an ADA accessible restroom, making the slough more accessible to everyone.

Honorable Mentions – Economic Portland

Trillium Charter School/Academia Verde: Academia Verde Project
Funds needed for this project: $20,000

Academia Verde (“Green Academy”) develops civic solutions to the green divide by building green-collar skills of marginalized youth and by connecting environmental protection to economic prospects. The program works collaboratively with Trillium Charter School, Latino youth, neighborhood adolescents, community organizations, and Portland’s green-collar economic sector. Participants will build a roof-top garden and other garden infrastructure (located at Trillium Charter School); grow edibles; complete site visits to local green workplaces, sustainability-focused businesses, training programs and colleges; facilitate peer-to-peer workshops; learn about environmental and social justice; and run a green campaign called the Green Jobs Pledge.

Honorable Mentions – Environmental Portland

Mercy Corps Northwest: Increasing Land Access and Capacity for Immigrant and Refugee Gardeners
Funds needed for this project: $13,000

Mercy Corps Northwest currently works to empower immigrants and refugees through farming programs. This new project will expand the organization’s programming by connecting partner gardeners in need of land with landowners willing to create community gardens. Translated information pertaining to land availability would be made available to new Portland residents, along with organic gardening classes developed specifically for Portland’s diverse immigrant and refugee population and free/reduced price gardening materials. This program aims to foster both environmental and social sustainability though open community spaces.

Honorable Mentions – Learning Portland

Centennial Learning Center: 4C The Future Program: Our Voices, Our Future – Early College Access Program
Funds needed for this project: $20,000

Students attending Oregon alternative schools are disproportionately low-income and have experienced many barriers to education. As a result, this population is underrepresented in institutions of higher learning. 4C The Future Program will collaborate in a civic engagement effort between other alternative schools, Lewis and Clark College and My Story to ensure that all youth have equal access to higher education options. Lewis and Clark will oversee a youth-led research process during which students will explore equity in education, barriers to and opportunities for college access, and youth empowerment from the perspective of young people most affected. This information will be chronicled in a traveling photographic exhibit designed to reach other young people, policy makers and community members.

Miracle Theatre Group: Milagro en SEIS
Funds needed for this project: $20,000

Miracle Theatre works to ensure that Latino youth have access to theater arts. In this project, the group proposes to initiate a unique, bilingual theater arts program that will serve high school students of the Spanish/English International School (SEIS) at Roosevelt High School. This program will create a curriculum that teaches theater arts holistically, which includes study of dramatic literature, history, playwriting, dramaturgical research and performance skills. Students will craft and perform in their own play, culminate in a performance for the entire student body as well as an additional public performance that will be available to the broader community.

Oregon Outreach Inc.: Urban Opportunities
Funds needed for this project: $14,500

Urban Opportunities envisions a healthy community where our most vulnerable young people are fully supported through gainful employment. Developed by 2008 Skidmore Prize winner Polly Bangs (original owner of “Pasta Bangs”), Urban Opportunities provides a paid one-month training period with the possibility of permanent employment for young people, enabling youth the ability to gain job skills in a hands-on environment. This innovative after school enrichment program also provides Portland area at-risk youth from low income families and under-supported schools with accredited workforce employment training, increasing their ability to succeed on the job.

Pangaea Project: Empowering Youth to Become Changemakers
Funds needed for this project: $15,000

The Pangaea Project empowers youth from low-income families to become effective change-makers in their community and the world. Through an intensive eight-month program that includes a one-month international component, Pangaea participants build skills that are critical for productive leadership, discover issues about which they feel passionate and learn concrete tools that are essential for positive social change.

Sabin Community Development Corporation: LearnerWeb Project
Funds needed for this project: $20,000

The LearnerWeb Project, a pioneering effort developed at Portland State University with Sabin
Community Development Corporation is a learner-focused web and telephone help system that provides greater access to Adult Basic Education (ABE) services and content to adult learners to improve their basic skills, prepare for the GED, college transition, workforce training, re-entry skills and more.

Honorable Mentions – Social Portland

Coalition of Communities of Color: Capacity Building and Cultivating Socially Sensitive Practice
Funds needed for this project: $20,000

Coalition Communities of Color proposes to address socioeconomic disparities in services experienced by communities through collective action and capacity-building. To achieve this aim, Coalition Communities of Color will create two training curricula. The first will provide training and advocacy tools to community members, equipping them to work effectively with policy makers. The second will work with policy makers and researchers, providing insight into the current limitations of mainstream data collection. This project will connect decision-makers with grassroots leaders in communities of color, setting new standards for use of data in policy.

Jefferson High School: RU*SOS Project
Funds needed for this project: $18,980

The RU*SOS Project—text lingo for “are you ok?”—is an innovative youth leadership and social-media program targeting youth of all backgrounds. The goal of RU*SOS is to provide youth with information regarding healthy relationships and sexual health. Youth leaders would be trained to conduct peer-to-peer workshops that tap into the healing power of creative arts and technology. Youth would also learn how to collaborate with existing resources to develop a network of parents, teachers, students and policy-makers to address relationship and sexual health issues in the community.

Los Niños Cuentan: Culturally Appropriate Support Services through Clubs for Latino Families Affected by Domestic and Sexual Violence
Funds needed for this project: 15,000

Los Niños Cuentan recognizes that Latino families do not always respond to traditional services. This project proposes a culturally specific method to address domestic violence by empowering Latino families with resources and support through “clubs” or workshops. These workshops consist of education, life skills and hands on activities while creating a non-threatening environment for people to share their experiences.

North Portland Community Works: Full Circle - Intercultural Conversations and Community Journalism
Funds needed for this project: $13,452

North Portland Community Works, in partnership with The Sentinel, hopes to reach 50,000 Sentinel readers and 300 community participants through Full Circle, a storytelling project that strives to engage residents of North and Northeast Portland in intercultural conversation. Through group discussions, a print feature in the Sentinel and online multi-media projects, Full Circle hopes to bridge some of the divides in class, culture and ethnicity that can exist in diverse neighborhoods. The project will consist of three community meetings that will address topics affecting the cultural life of residents. The Sentinel would write one feature story on each meeting.

Northwest Neighborhood Energy (N2E): Boise Neighborhood Energy Survey
Funds needed for this project: $20,000

Northwest Neighborhood Energy (N2E) proposes a new district energy system using renewable resources for space and water heating to residents of the historic Mississippi area and surrounding Boise neighborhood. The first step in this endeavor includes door-to-door surveys on household and business energy data. N2E also intends to create a community partnership with college students and youth from local high schools to facilitate a series of “Think and Do Tanks.” This will consist of roundtable discussions followed by community action events. These activities will promote research that will act as a model for in the implementation of new, more sustainable district energy infrastructure.

Oregon Community Warehouse: The Community Collects
Funds needed for this project: $13,420

The Community Collects Project provides a new mechanism for Portlanders to support the collective well being of people in need. Oregon Community Warehouse is a volunteer-based nonprofit agency that collects and redistributes donated furniture and household items to those who need them at no cost. However, the program currently relies on donations being dropped off at the warehouse site. The Community Collects Project would enable Community Warehouse to go out into the community with a visually striking new truck, enhancing their ability to collect household items from donors. The organization would also position their truck, along with information, in different Portland neighborhoods each weekend.

Oregon Cultural Access: Disability Inclusion Project
Funds needed for this project: $19,982

Representing a unique collaboration between several diverse groups within the disability community, the Disability Inclusion Project is designed to facilitate understanding between people with disabilities and Latino health workers without disabilities. Through community dialogues and workshops that utilize popular education methodology and the arts, participants learn to embrace and express affirmative understandings of disability and inclusion. The long-term goal of this project is for participants to affect change in their own communities, so that Portland’s civic life becomes naturally inclusive of people with disabilities.

Portland Actors Ensemble: Sign Language Interpreting for “Shakespeare in the Parks”
Funds needed for this project: $1,500

Last year, Portland Actors Ensemble was approached by an educator who had been teaching “Julius Caesar” to her hearing impaired students. She inquired whether the ensemble had sign language translation for their free Shakespeare in the Parks performances. The Board responded with this proposal, which Portland Actors Ensemble believes fits perfectly with their mission to “bring financially accessible classical theater to Portland communities in a non-traditional environment.”

Sponsors Organized to Assist Refugees (SOAR)/Islamic Social Services of Oregon State (I-SOS): Portland Citizen Project
Funds needed for this project: $14,146

The Portland Citizen Project would connect eligible immigrants and refugees with the information and services they need to pursue U.S. citizenship. A creative interfaith partnership between SOAR, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon (a multi-denominational Christian organization) and Islamic Social Services of Oregon State, this project employs a workshop model that would reach a far greater number of immigrants and refugees than the current one-on-one legal services.

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