Category Archives: Health

Neighbors, PTA Pitch In on MLK Day of Service

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The community turned out on Monday, January 16th on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service to make a dent in the weeds and trash at King School Park. English ivy had taken over the south side of the parking lot at the King Neighborhood Facility and was hiding all manner of things thereunder. A robust group of neighbors, King School PTA members, and invasive species foes dug, hacked snipped and pulled all day. The result is that the strip of land is now nearly completely cleared and several truck loads were hauled away.

Thanks to a grant from NECN and the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District, the area will be re-landscaped with native plants that are not invasive and that will thrive in the location while providing an easily maintained habitat. There are tentative plans to finish the clearing on President’s Day, February 20th.

Special thanks go to all the volunteers, Portland Farmers Market, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Metro.

Help your community be selected for a tree inventory

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Walking around your neighborhood, do you see areas available for tree planting, street trees in need of maintenance, and neighbors who are concerned but don’t know where to begin? Urban Forestry is helping Portlanders take action to improve their community’s street trees by conducting tree inventories and creating neighborhood tree plans.

Communities begin by forming tree teams and gathering volunteers to conduct a street tree inventory. Volunteers are guided by Urban Forestry staff, who provide training and tools. Together, information is collected on tree species, size, health, site conditions, and available planting spaces. Data is analyzed and findings are presented to neighborhood stakeholders. Achievable strategies are set by the collective body to improve existing trees, identify opportunities for an expanding tree canopy, and connect the neighborhood with city and non-profit resources. The result is a Neighborhood Tree Plan. The plan identifies the current status and health of neighborhood street trees and provides recommendations for neighborhood action.

How Can I Get an Inventory and Tree Plan in my Neighborhood?
Communities are selected by a competitive process. To apply, submit this application by January 16, 2012.

Expectations
Tree inventories are designed to be fun and educational community events. Requesting communities first work with their neighborhood association to organize a tree team. Tree teams organize three inventory work days, recruit volunteers, and conduct the inventory. Urban Forestry provides organizational and inventory training, supplies, and work day leaders. After the inventory, Urban Forestry will guide tree teams in interpreting data and creating tree plans.

“It was so much fun to participate in such an amazing community project. It was such a pleasure being a part of a project that not only helps to maintain the charming character of the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood but also lays the foundation for a tree plan to help future neighborhood development.” -Kerry Wooddell, Sellwood-Moreland

Questions
Contact Angie DiSalvo at angie.disalvo@portlandoregon.gov
For more information:
Learn more about the Street Tree Inventory project and view past inventory reports at
www.portlandonline.com/parks/treeinventory

KNA Special Meeting to Endorse Grant Seekers

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King Neighborhood Association Special General Meeting:
October 31st, 6:00-6:45 pm
King Neighborhood Facility
4815 NE 7th Avenue

Hello all:

King Neighborhood Association has the opportunity to meet and discuss two proposed projects that are would affect livability in our neighborhood. Each of these projects is being submitted for a grant with the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, whose grant process has a deadline of November 1st. The proposals were not completed in time to be considered at KNA’s last meeting, so we’ve scheduled a special Halloween meeting to look each of them over and decide whether to endorse them.

• KING SCHOOL PARK/KING SCHOOL MURAL AND GRAFFITI ABATEMENT PROJECT
Local artist Rodolfo Serna working with the arts-to-schools program, the Right Brain Initiative, will work with students at all age levels in King School as an artist-in-residence to produce a mural to beautify the King School Park grounds and create a sense of place and identity out of a blank wall adjacent to the tennis courts. This area is a frequent target for graffiti due to its large empty vertical surface. Murals have been shown to reduce the incidence of graffiti and this project will fill a gap in King’s visual arts curriculum this year. As King continues to develop its International Baccalaureate program, integrating more art into the school will be crucial to developing the student body’s various means of expression and will develop investment in the wider community.

• DOOR-TO-DOOR SURVEY OF NORTHEAST MEN’S WELLNESS GOALS & FAVORITE ACTIVITIES, AS WELL AS REFERRALS TO NEIGHBORHOOD WELLNESS RESOURCES:
Manifest, an eight-year-old non-profit men’s wellness organization that empowers men to prevent & address chronic illness (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV, & depression/suicide), will be doing a door-to-door survey this spring of hundreds of men’s’ wellness goals, challenges, & favorite activities in the Concordia, Vernon, King, & Sabin neighborhoods. We also will be referring these men to local businesses, non-profits, churches, government agencies, and neighbor organizations that can help them achieve their most important wellness goals. Men in our neighborhoods are dying five years before women from five completely preventable illnesses, and those illnesses are costing our county & state more than a $1 billion annually in unnecessary & painful treatments of diseases we could easily prevent & address right here in our neighborhood with existing resources like local wellness-related businesses, non-profits, churches, government agencies, & neighborhood groups. Men need regular exercise, good food, work, & community focused on wellness, and they are more likely to do these things regularly when they can do them close to home. Manifest intends to hire diverse local men to do the surveys and make neighborhood referrals as they are completing each survey.

We understand that Halloween plus such short notice may make it difficult to attend. If you have a bit of time to spare on Monday, we welcome your participation and input on these proposals. for more information, email us at info@kingneighborhood.org. We hope to see you there!

Kitchen Commons: skills, resources, and spaces for affordable food!

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From Kitchen Commons:

Hello my name is Mollie and I would like to inform you about a new organization called Kitchen Commons.

MISSION:
Kitchen Commons is a network of Portland metro area community kitchen and food preservation organizers. Our goal is to improve community food security by supporting and developing spaces in our neighborhoods where people can come together to learn about cooking and preserving food on a budget, and access equipment and resources for both personal and microenterprise use. Our vision is to build community through food by joining together, cooking together, and feeding families together.

The role of Kitchen Commons is to support, develop, and promote and match kitchen resources with community needs. By fostering the development of lots of different kinds of kitchens, we can help to meet lots of different evolving needs in different communities. We do this by connecting neighborhood kitchen organizers with resources and tools, creating opportunities to network and share ideas, and advocating for policies that facilitate the development and use of community kitchens.

We’ve found that it’s important to emphasize that there are lots of community kitchen activities that don’t require certification or special equipment like classes and community cooking events. Also we are interested in helping groups fundraise or solicit in-kind donations in order to improve their kitchen space. Several groups with kitchens have thought that they could not participate with us at all because their kitchen isn’t certified or has various deficiencies.

PROJECT:
Right now our website is in the process of being built. Kitchen Commons is a very new non-profit. The first step to making this website successful is to find organizations that are interested in publicizing their accessible kitchen, and adding it to our website.

My question to you is, do you have a Kitchen you would like to open up to your community or neighborhood? If so we are a free resource to publicize your kitchen to the public and help overcome barriers to community use of your kitchen.

Please let me know if your interested in knowing more information and I would love to speak with you more about it. Thanks so much for your time!

Sincerely,
Mollie
mollie@kitchencommons.net

Urban Farm Collective Seeks Donations

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From Kickstarter.com:

The Urban Farm Collective began in 2009, educating, growing and sharing food in inner NE Portland, Oregon and exchanging produce exclusively via a barter system. The first year we grew on just one lot; by the next year we’d grown to four sites.

This year, we have been accepted as a project of Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust and have the opportunity to take on five new plots, bringing our total garden space up to more than 1/2 acre.

If we are able to transform these new lots into gardens, this would create something that as far as we know exists nowhere else in the country: a non-profit urban farm, exchanging produce to participants via barter and donating significant amounts of fresh, local produce to the community at large.

Volunteer gardeners and land owners are already on board; all we need is the money to transform the lots. The money will go toward purchasing irrigation systems, tools, greenhouse supplies, path and fence building materials, water catchment systems and harvesting supplies.

Urban Farm Collective video/contribution website
Urban Farm Collective site