Part of the Family Fighting Against CF

Saturday, May 16 was Walk Day in Portland! "Team Howie" walked in the Great Strides walk to find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis in honor of William Fisher. William is Shannon's honorary nephew who lives in Boise, ID and he was born with the disease last January. He has been teaching us all a lot, and he's also the reason five of us found ourselves in Oaks Amusement Park on that beautiful Saturday getting to know some of the other families who have been touched by CF. Team Howie surpassed its fund-raising goal and came up with $1,615 through donations of co-workers and friends and family from across the country! The Oregon Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation hosted six walks in May and raised a collective total of over $280,000!
Here is a Fact Sheet on CF for anyone interested in learning more about the disease. William's mom Andrea tells us she's hearing exciting news about new studies and treatments so we are hopeful. Be on the look-out for more news from Shannon on the upcoming stair climb up Big Pink in September that will raise more money for a cure. Thank you so much to everyone who supported our walk and good luck, Little William!!

Super fun chaos!

May 12: Our second re-pack at the Oregon Food Bank was a huge success! We had a different volunteer coordinating this time and she was wonderful. We heard better descriptions of what we would be doing, the event was better organized than the last time we were there, and we weren't just focused on a wasteful peanut recall. This time we were sorting through donated food in yellow bags (surprise, surprise) from the Letter Carrier drive three days before, as well as food that was just loose in enormous cardboard boxes. We loaded the food into smaller cardboard boxes which were taped and loaded onto pallets. The pallet loader volunteers would ring a cow bell like crazy every time we filled a pallet so needless to say the mood was happy and frantic. Lots of cheering, lots of laughing, lots of grabbing and tossing of canned goods! We seem to have made good progress and were able to see our stats for the night for added encouragement and feel-good-ness. I heard things like "I had a blast!" and "I would do that again in a second!" Happy times. "Because no one should be hungry!"

Yellow bags, everywhere!

Saturday, May 9th, as I'm sure you are aware, was the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive day. (It happens on the second Saturday in May each year.) We had a Return Serve crew of eight at the Piedmont Post Office to help sort the bags of food brought in by the mail carriers as they returned from their shifts. This was Return Serve's first event where we had more bodies than we had work to do. Our group stayed in good spirits though, and when there was a load, we were happy to help bring the bags of food from the trucks to the boxes. We heard rumors that donations were down this year from previous years, but later we heard that the numbers were still quite good. Another rumor was that the NALC Food Drive started in Eugene, OR and then went nationwide! We'll have to check our facts for these bits of trivia, but for now they make a good story. Thanks to everyone who volunteered at this event - more Oregon Food Bank fun ahead!

The art supplies have landed!

After many weeks, we finally gathered up the art supplies that we had collected at various locations and dropped them off to the kids at New Avenues for Youth. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and it was great to see the organization's hip, fun space in downtown Portland. One enthusiastic young person was there for the drop off and expressed a lot of excitement at the prospect of using our supplies for an upcoming rally in Salem in support of funding for youth programs. We learned that sometimes NAFY will host art workshops with a structured activity (we heard the knitting classes are very popular) and the kids can either do the structured activity or they can do whatever occurs to them with the supplies that are there. With what we brought, there's definitely something for everyone! (see photo!) We were very happy to give so much to them with just a little bit of effort. Thanks to everyone who contributed supplies, we hope that at least this was an excuse to sort through and tidy your craft closets!

So many books, so many children!

Wednesday, April 29, four of us met a little place called the Children's Book Bank. What a wonderful organization! The story behind this one is the treasure and Dani Swope is the woman behind the magic. She started the CBB about a year and a half ago on the notion that children's achievement in school starts from the training they receive in their pre-school years. During her time as a Teach for America volunteer in 1991, Dani witnessed a gap in achievement levels between the students she was teaching. Some had had little to no exposure to reading or books before arriving at school and they consistently struggled. Even if these children could improve at the same rate as the other children, they remained behind.

Dani started the CBB to address this specific problem. Through grants and book donations she collects books for children under the age of six. She and her volunteers (now including us!) spruce up the books - wiping down the covers and removing any marks and patching any tears - and then they sort the books into assorted stacks of around twelve books each. Each stack goes into a tote and the totes are distributed to area Head Start programs. By using the existing Head Start system, Dani knows the children receiving her books are in low-income households, she knows the books arrive at the homes with the Head Start staff who can model reading aloud for the parents of the children, and she can systematically cover the city one neighborhood at a time! She has already achieved an incredible amount in a very short time and we were very impressed with this one-woman operation!

Here are two sentences that may give you pause:

In homes in middle income neighborhoods, the ratio of books to children is 13 books for every child.

In low income neighborhoods the ratio is 1 book for every 300 children.

The moral of the story is that we should be buying books both for the children we know and those we don't. We should be reading to them every day, and we should be cleaning and sorting books at the Children's Book Bank!