The Family Ken!

We were back to Snowcap on August 31 and Ken brought out all the stops with a work team of his mother, aunt, uncle and the ever-reliable Mitchell. This unstoppable team took care of preparing soup bags while the rest of us handled some serious restocking of the pantry shelves. Snowcap used to assemble food boxes for pick-up, but now clients can browse the pantry shelves and select what they specifically need or want item-by-item. We made sure there was good variety on the shelves from what was available in the warehouse and had everything faced forward and ship-shape.

Snowcap is seeing tremendous need for their services. We'll be back soon to help keep those shelves full!

Back to flippin' asphalt slabs

August 29 found three Return Servers joining back up with Depave to help the Vermont Hills Church turn 7,200 SF of parking lot into more community garden!

This really was a fun project, though our crew wasn't able to stay very long. The asphalt was pretty thin (we've learned that no two asphalt jobs are the same) but then there was a weird gravely layer below that also had to be crunched and removed. A two-step kind of deal. The sweetest part though was that several of the church members cooked up a lovely lunch and ordered in pizza for us! It was so nice to sit and bond with fellow Depavers. An added benefit to an already wonderful activity!

The church pastor gave a great speech and thank you message to the group at lunch talking about how the church strives to be an example to their neighbors. Growing vegetables where we used to park cars - a good example, indeed!

Thanks, Depave!

Return Serve by the Numbers!

Coming up on Return Serve's 18 month anniversary, I thought I would post about our progress:
Some key stats:

First volunteer event: February 21, 2009
Number of people on email list: 94
Number of people who have volunteered: 52
(Percentage of people on email list who have volunteered: 55%)
Number of events: 41
Number of organizations we've helped: 22
Volunteer hours logged: 634.5
Times people have volunteered: 230
Average number volunteers per project: 6
Value of time in Oregon min. wage dollars: $5,329.80

I don't know about you, but I love us.

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Could it be? More oats!

Even though you've seen this before, we don't want you to stop being interested in reading about our trips to the Oregon Food Bank. We can't help it if it's the easiest, most fun and energetic volunteering in town. We just can't stop going. And, to further fuel our excitement, July 20 was our second time with oats! (See previous post for more details on the awesomeness of oats.) Therapeutically scooping, a pound at a time, the volunteers scooped a total of 7,000 pounds of oats Tuesday night. Figuring 1.3 pounds of food for an average meal, that means that each of the 65 volunteers made 82 meals possible. Really, the OFB network deserves our constant admiration. They run such a tight ship and have such an extensive reach. We happily agree to keep coming, oats or no oats!

Please! Drink more! It's for the animals!

So, the Portland International BeerFest is organized (so we're told) by a man who is devoted to animals. Therefore, he invited several local animal groups (Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon, Animal Aid and Indigo Rescue) to set up shop at the beer tasting event down in the north park blocks July 16-18. That's where we came in. Asking people for money to buy raffle tickets while they're drinking a lot of beer is actually quite easy, and we found that they're quite ready to give! Indigo Rescue brought nine, 12-week old puppies for show and tell, and that didn't hurt either. For $3, people could spend five minutes in the pen with the puppies. It was a huge hit! How can you stay away from nine adorable puppies? Not to mention that one litter of NINE puppies is absolutely the best argument for spaying and neutering you can find. Another great money maker was a shuffle board table where drinking patrons could pay $3 to try to get thirty points sliding a swill-filled pint glass down the table. These are truly brilliant ideas. Even with all the fancy auctions, galas and other alcohol-enhanced fundraisers that are held every year, I still say the drinking/fund-raising opportunities are underutilized. Let's work on that in the future, shall we?

If a hot dog's cooked and nobody eats, then.....

On Sunday, June 27, a few of us headed to the sweet grounds of Club Paesano in Gresham to help Human Solutions. HS is one of our favorite groups, whose website reads that "Human Solutions eliminates barriers to escaping poverty through emergency family shelter, job training, affordable housing, eviction prevention, and emergency household assistance". The event on the 27th was a fundraising Jamboree complete with a local country music act, a hot dog stand, raffles and games. The weather was beautiful, the event was well publicized..... and almost no one came. A hard pill to swallow for the Human Solutions family who is a very hard-working and dedicated crowd. There's really no explanation for the poor attendance aside from a lot of competing activities on a beautiful summer day. We were there to help the few people who did show, and then we were able to offer help cleaning up and taking down. Humans Solutions and all their clients will keep pressing forward - on to the next big idea, fighting the good fight to end the cycle of poverty in logical, sustainable ways. Best wishes!!

Point us to the check-out counter

Even after the handful of times we've helped the Multnomah County Library, we hadn't heard about the "It's in the Bag" program. These are bags of materials organized around a central theme and including a curriculum guide. The bags are available for check out and help educators, day care providers and parents get a little more interactive with their library materials! We covered books with plastic to prepare them for their trips into homes and classrooms. Some of our favorites (or I should say Shannon's favorites): Llama llama red pajama by Anna Dewdney and Fancy Nancy by Jane O'connor and Robin Preiss Glasser. Happy reading, kids!