Amigos Multicultural Services Center (May)
$250 from Helios fund
$250 to be raised from the community
$500 Total donation
Grant Started: May 27, 2005
Grant Ends: August 27, 2005
Community funds raised as of September 6th: $250.00
GRANT MET!
Description:
For over a decade, Amigos Multicultural Services Center (formerly Amigos de los Sobrevivientes, or Friends of the Survivors) has been a volunteer-driven, Eugene-based organization aiding victims of political violence, including torture survivors. Most have arrived here from Latin America. In response to emerging needs in the Eugene/Springfield area, we revised our organization's mission in early 2005. While continuing to serve victims of political violence, Amigos is extending support services and advocacy to other immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, irrespective of their national origin or ethnicity. In addition, while maintaining key programs in Eugene (a residence for families undergoing healing; transitional housing for young adults; and Juventud Faceta, a youth group), we are shifting our main office to Springfield to better serve that community's immigrant population. It is vital that we prepare new and updated brochures that describe Amigos' revised mission and services. Our movement into Springfield must be widely communicated to effectively reach people there who can benefit from Amigos' programs. Amigos also wishes to increase general public awareness of its programs and the contributions they make to the community. Informational brochures are vital in helping to attract community support, raise funds for the organization, and recruit Amigos volunteers. Amigos is seeking a grant in the amount of $500. We will pay a bilingual consultant a $100 stipend to design new brochure materials and use $400 for paper and printing. Public donations, when matched by Helios, will enable Amigos to obtain the brochures that we need.

Another Way Enterprises (AWE) (February)

Grant Started: February 25, 2005
Grant Ends: May 25, 2005
Community funds raised as of May 25th: $305
Grant is met!

Description:
AWE is a grassroots effort to build a stronger community and promote an environmentally and socially sustainable local economy for Cottage Grove, Oregon. Driven to find another way to live in society, and inspired by the creative and resourceful community in Cottage Grove, AWE believes in supporting our neighbors by buying as locally as possible. In 2004, AWE published the first Made in the Grove Directory, a listing of more than 100 environmentally and socially conscious local businesses, non-profit groups working to build community, and individuals with skills to offer their neighbors. 1000 copies of the directory went fast and dozens of folks called to say what they are doing for a sustainable Cottage Grove. AWE is now preparing the next edition which will include many new listings and serve even more of the community. We plan to distribute at least 2500 copies this year. More directories should equal more Grovers connecting with each other and buying local, sustainable goods and services.

Eugene Chapter of Northwest Earth Institute (January)

Grant Started: January 28, 2005
Grant Ends: April 28, 2005
Community funds raised as of April 28th: $250
Grant is met!

Description:
The Eugene chapter of the Northwest Earth Institute offers a series of six discussion courses in workplaces, homes, centers of faith, education centers, and other locations. The courses include: (a) Choices for Sustainable Living, (b) Discovering a Sense of Place, (c) Voluntary Simplicity, (d) Exploring Deep Ecology, (e) Globalization and Its Critics, and (f) Healthy Children - Healthy Planet. Total course enrollment in the US has now surpassed 60,000. The courses build awareness, inspire change on a personal level and engagement on a social level, create connections among like-minded people, and build a critical mass for larger social change. The grant will help pay for a part-time coordinator to ensure continuity and build up a volunteer base. Local volunteers will help start up courses through contacting potential initiators, help with promotion, give presentations to groups interested in joining a course, assist with facilitation at the first meeting, and stay in contact with and assist the group if/when needed. The Eugene chapter receives training, advice and other (non-monetary) support from the Northwest Earth Institute in Portland. See more information at www.nwei.org.

Lane County Food Coalition (LCFC) (February)
website

Grant Started: February 1, 2005
Grant Ends: May 1, 2005
Community funds raised as of May 1st: $250
Grant is met!

Description:
LCFC plans a new edition of its Lane County Food Directory: where to find local foods in Lane County this April to coincide with Earth Day. An initial directory published in 2003 will be updated and expanded as part of the LCFC's "Buy Local, Buy Lane" campaign. The food directory links consumers, restaurants and institutions to local farmers and food processors for their mutual benefit. The directory includes listings for farmers markets and farm stands, consumer supported agriculture (CSA) opportunities, and restaurants that feature locally grown items as well as listings of individual farms and their produce available to consumers and institutions. Many of the farms and products featured are organic and preserve genetic diversity. We currently are gathering information from growers, farm markets, wineries, restaurants, retailers and processors. The 32-page tabloid publication will be printed by the Eugene Weekly, with 10,000 copies distributed to its readers and another 15,000 placed at locations around Lane County and Oregon.

Oregon Toxics Alliance (January 2005)
website

Grant Started: January 26, 2005
Grant Ends: April 26, 2005
Community funds raised as of April 26th: $370
Grant is met!

Description:
In 1996, Eugene voters said "YES!" to a Community Toxics Right-to-Know program that would track toxics chemicals that are imported and released within the city limits. The Oregon Association of Industries lashed out in fear at the emergence of a community program that gave the public information on levels of air and water emissions from major polluters. They acted by convincing then Governor Kitzhaber to issue an executive order to BAN any other Oregon city or county from implementing a Toxic Right-to-Know law. OTA came into existence in 1999 as a progressive response to the Governor's unwarranted decision to restrict the ability of citizens to understand the nature of possible contamination in their neighborhoods. Again, Eugene's Toxic Right-to-Know program is under attack from members of the "old guard" as evidenced in a Register-Guard editorial "Unfairness is Toxic Too" (January 18, 2005). The editors question whether the law has any value and should continue to exist! The objective of OTA's project is to do outreach to Eugene citizens about the benefits of the Toxic Right-to-Know law. Our goal is to create grassroots community support for expanding the program to include a more realistic spectrum of businesses that use and emit toxics. OTA must create strong community support as a bulwark against those forces that would like to keep the public ignorant about emissions to our local air and water. OTA will accomplish this outreach through a capacity-building media project that makes use of a letter-writing campaign, opinion pieces, a newsletter and flyers that will go out to members and non-members alike. OTA must gear-up now in order to build the necessary level of support for public hearings and a possible voter referendum.

Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC) (December 2004)
website

Grant Started: December 1, 2004
Grant Ends: March 1, 2005
Community funds raised as of March1st: $415
Grant is met!

Description:
With Measure 36 and a strengthened religious right, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBTQ) people live amid hostility. CALC will intensify gay rights support, challenging bigotry and institutionalized oppression experienced by LGBTQ people. Objective: greater safety, acceptance for LGBTQ community.
Implementation plan:
1. What Does Family Look Like? --- CALC's new photo exhibit portrays diverse loving families, including LGBTQ families. We'll schedule ten locations in 2005. Outcome: Broader acceptance of LGBTQ, other non-traditional families.
2. LGBTQ-friendly Schools CALC's Springfield Alliance for Equality and Respect (SAfER) is building a Safe Schools Network (with PFLAG, students/staff). Personnel from 12 Springfield schools involved already; we want contacts in each school. Objectives: offer support, safety for students/staff, information, resources, workshops, briefings; support Gay/Straight Alliances; link community groups with school personnel; ensure appropriate responses to harassment. Outcome: More support for LGBTQ students.
3. Understanding of Gender Identity Issues CALC's Back to Back: Allies for Human Dignity (B2B) will build understanding of transgender issues, reduce trans phobia through presentations, workshops; collaborate with City's Gender Identity Work Group; organize a transgender group to gain a strong voice; push to amend Eugene city code to protect transgender individuals. Outcome: A safer environment for trans individuals.
4. Counter Hate Activity CALC will counter and lessen impact of hate groups with information, education, hot line, email reporting, research, counter-leafleting, media. Stop Hate! enlists local businesses as Hate Free Zones, individuals as "eyes and ears." Stop Hate! will mobilize responses when haters target LGBTQ community. Outcome: Less room for hate.
This grant will cover costs for printing program flyers and for the Stop Hate Hot Line and Springfield phoneline.

Skipping Stones

Grant Started: December 3 , 2004
Grant Ended: December 31st, 2004
Community funds raised as of December 31st: $280
Grant is met!

Description:
Skipping Stones promotes creative writing, multicultural awareness and nature appreciation in children and youth. When young people read our magazine, they realize that their lives, their challenges and successes, their ideas are worthy of consideration. When children begin learning about and communicating with people of different backgrounds at an early age, they incorporate that understanding into the way they treat others and carry it into their decision-making as adults. The Project:
We propose Sept. 11th as a National Day of Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue. We would like to see schools and communities everywhere remember Sept. 11th as a day to connect with each other, to understand our differences, to appreciate and respect the strands of diversity that exist in our human family. We'll send out informative brochures to promote this and use them to build a cooperative, unifying world for our children and their children. We hope that schools, organizations and communities will organize diverse events--presentations, dialogues, discussion groups, get-togethers, writing contests, articles and poems, and salon-style interactions between people belonging to the diverse segments in the community-- in their communities. We will help them by providing ideas and resources. Our website will also contain more information on the proposed National Day of Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue. We'll send publicity material and organizing information and encourage youth of diverse backgrounds to participate in the National Day of Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue with their ideas, art and creative writing.

The School Garden Project of Lane County

Grant Started: August 27th, 2004
Grant Ended: November 27th 2004
Community funds raised as of November 27th: $275
Grant is met!

Description:
The School Garden Project of Lane County (SGP) supports over a dozen K-12 schools in the 4j, Bethel, and Springfield school districts. This support takes the form of garden design and development, staff trainings and workshops, curriculum development, instructional support, volunteer recruitment and coordination, work parties, and garden maintenance. This work is conducted by two part-time staff members. In the fall of 2004, the SGP is looking to add three to five new partner schools. Additional financial support is needed to fund staff hours for these specific projects: ·- Implementation of a native plant courtyard garden at Gilham Elementary ·- Facilitation of kid-centered design process for new gardens at Corridor and Ceasar Chavez Elementary ·- Staff in-service training day on garden curriculum planning and implementation.

ManiFest of the Mani Shimada Fund

Grant Started: August 27th, 2004
Grant Ended: November 27th 2004
Community funds raised as of October 29th: $325
Grant is met!

Description:
ManiFest: Celebration and Reflection on Life, Death and Transformation ManiFest is the first annual celebration to commemorate the passing of Mani Shimada (Feb.8, 1987-Sep. 26, 2003). It is a celebration and manifestation of Mani's enduring qualities of compassion, courage and being in the moment. Honoring Mani's love of music and life, we would like to manifest Mani's spirit by being fully present in an event that has fun at its heart. ManiFest is also about those who have lost loved ones. We want a chance to remember our loved ones and express our sense of loss and its transformation. ManiFest will be a one-day event that will have music, various activities focused on healing, an open mike, poetry, theater and much more. Courageous Kids, a grief support program for children and teens, will bring us a theatrical presentation. A thoughtful celebration and open mike session is aimed at exploring the depth and meaning of life through openly expressing feelings of loss and transformation. We will learn ways of dealing with the death and grief through the sharing of individual stories and various activities led by experts. This portion of the event will also feature spiritual leaders, therapists and counselors from our community who have experience dealing with death issues and teenagers. We will learn how different traditions deal with death, and we hope to gain insights on how to approach life, death and transformation. All events will be aimed at teens, but people of all ages will be included and will benefit. ManiFest Celebration is Saturday, September 25, 11 am - 4 pm, at the Wellsprings Friends School, 3590 W. 18th, Eugene, 541/686-1223. The ManiFest Concert is Friday, October 8th at 7 pm, at the WOW Hall.

Emerald Biodiversity Council
website

Grant Started: July 12th, 2004
Grant Ended: October 12th 2004
Community funds raised as of October 12th: $310
Grant is met!

Description:
The project at hand is the first phase of the development of a biodiversity council. We have solicited input and interest from over thirty organizations in the Eugene-Springfield area in order to develop the framework for an initial workshop to take place in October 2004. This workshop will feature two speakers who are highly experienced not only in issues related to biodiversity, but also in starting networks such as the one we are proposing. A workshop organizing committee has been formed and has already completed many of the tasks that are necessary for the workshop to be a success. We are designing the program to include two key speakers as well as both small and large group discussion. By the end of the workshop we will have consensus on the underlying structure of the biodiversity council and concrete assignments to facilitate next steps in the council's establishment.

The outcome of this first phase is agreement on a structure for the biodiversity council and actions for next steps. The biodiversity council will greatly improve the ability of local groups to find information, share resources, develop collaborative plans, and magnify their own capacity to promote and conserve the natural heritage of the area.

Essentially all these funds will be used to pay for travel expenses for Laurel Ross, one of the presenters at the October workshop. The funds will be used to supplement contributions by organizations that participate in the October workshop.

Loving Kindness Yogathon
website

Grant Started: June 21st, 2004
Grant Ended: September 21st 2004
Community funds raised as September 20th: $7526
Grant is met!

Description:
It is our intention to raise awareness about the power of Loving Kindness. In a world where isolation and violence have become too commonplace, we will gather together in joy and open-heartedness to celebrate the generosity and gentleness of the human spirit. The twelve hour marathon of yoga practice and meditation embodies compassionate service in action and will raise funds to benefit two local charities. The Loving Kindness Yogathon is a completely volunteer supported event.

On October 2, 2004 the yoga community of Eugene will participate in twelve hours (7am-7pm) of yoga and meditation. This interdisciplinary event’s is to be held at St Mary’s Catholic Church at 1062 Charnelton (11th and Charnelton - map) . The goal is to raise $10,000 to be divided between two local non profit organizations. This year’s recipients are Healing Harvest and Birth to Three.

We plan to use the Helios and matching grant to help pay for printed promotional material. The $10,000 dollars will be raised through pledges acquired by folks participating in the twelve hour event.

Universal Healthcare for Oregon

Grant Started: May 24th, 2004
Grant Ended: August 24th 2004
Community funds raised as of August 24th: $250
Grant is met!

Description:
The mission of Universal Healthcare for Oregon (UHCO) is to strive to ensure that people in Oregon have access to affordable, quality and comprehensive health care; particularly those populations who are under-served, such as low income families, members of minority groups, those who are uninsured or under-insured and those who have difficulty gaining access to health care.

To this end, we are requesting funds to pay for printing 5000 pamphlets. The original four-fold brochure was created by two of our Board member volunteers. it is informative and appealing, white with blue design. The cover has on it this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"Of all forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane".

Content includes a statement of the principles of health care which our organization promotes and other quotes about health care by people of note. There are also brief statements on affordability, accessibility, security, right of choice and quality, characteristics intrinsic to universal, single payer health care. There is a form for membership and a request for donations.

Our mission is to strive toward making it possible for everyone's health care needs to be always covered.

Skipping Stones Magazine
website

Grant Started: April 5th, 2004
Grant Ended: July 5th 2004
Community funds raised as of July 5th: $250
Grant is met!

Description:
Skipping Stones proposes Sept. 11th as a National Day of Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue. Already, last year the National Association for Multicultural Education adopted a resolution to this effect, on my request and initiative.

We would like to see schools and communities everywhere to remember Sept. 11th as a day to connect with each other, to understand our differences, to appreciate and respect the strands of diversity that exist in our human family. We would like to send out informative brochures to promote this positive way of remembering the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and use them to build a cooperative, unifying world for our children and their children.

We hope that schools, organizations and communities will organize diverse events--presentations, dialogues, discussion groups, get-togethers, writing contests, articles and poems, and salons-style interactions between people belonging to the diverse segments in the community-- in their communites, to suit their needs and circumstances. We will help them by providing ideas and resources. Our website will also contain more information on the Proposed NAtional Day of Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue.

With your financial support, we will send such publicity material and organizing information and thus encourage youth of diverse backgrounds to participate in the National Day of Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue with their ideas, art and creative writing. This will help them feel more secure, build more self-respect within them and in their communities.

We believe that children and youth as well as their parents and teachers will benefit from this project. The project will increase a feeling of community and cooperation as well as self-esteem.

Huerto de la Familia (The Family Garden)

Grant Started: April 9th, 2004
Grant Ended: July 9th 2004
Community funds raised as of June 30th: $265
Grant is met!

Description:
Huerto de la Familia is located in Eugene, Oregon at the Churchill Community Garden operated by Food for Lane County. This year we will provide space and services for eight to ten families. Each family may choose to garden in either a 15' by 10' plot or a 30' by 20' plot. Families prepare, plant and tend their gardens and harvest their fruits and vegetables for their own use.

Our New Children's Program
In the previous five gardening seasons Huerto de la Familia has focused on reaching the adults and has only occasionally provided their children with activities at the garden. This year our goals include a structured, ongoing children's program to be implemented at the garden during the time that their parents are meeting for classes and tending their gardens. The new children's program would include:

• Age-appropriate gardening activities including their own garden

• A 'house' made of living sunflowers
• An area in their garden for digging
• Garden based art activities
• Bilingual stories and educational activities

The four outcomes of the children's program will be that the children will learn:

1. Basic organic gardening skills
2. The life cycle of a garden
3. The ecosystem of the site
4. Fresh fruits and vegetables taste good and are good for you

Huerto de la Familia and the children's program will benefit the participants in the following ways:

• Provide organic produce at no cost with high nutritional value
• Appreciation of vegetables and fruits families have grown themselves
• Reduced family stress
• Child centered gardening activities while parents garden
• A safe place to spend time outdoors
• Less isolation as multiple families work toward a common goal
• A sense of control, feelings of pride and increased self-esteem

Description:
CWP works to protect and restore the forests, waters and wildlife of the Cascadia Bioregion, with a particular emphasis on the central Oregon Cascades. We use a variety of tools to advance our conservation goals, including monitoring and litigation, outreach and education, and advocacy work. The CWP’s Community and Workforce Program is an important part of our outreach and education efforts, which highlights successful examples of natural resources management on federal forests, creates dialogue between traditionally hostile constituencies, helps resolve long-standing controversy surrounding the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan, and builds support for innovative new forest practices on federal lands in Oregon. Its goal is to simultaneously protect the ecological integrity of Oregon’s irreplaceable old-growth forests and to preserve the economic and social integrity of rural communities.

In 2003 we made a number of in-roads with traditionally hostile constituencies through outreach in rural areas. We also built relationships with organized labor by working in coalition with the AFL-CIO, Carpenters Union and Western Council on the Oregon Quality Jobs Initiative—a successful legislative effort to encourage high-skill, high-wage jobs in the state of Oregon through restoration contracts.

The centerpiece of our Community and Workforce Program, and the main focus of our work in 2004, will be field tours that we sponsor and plan in conjunction with partners that we’ve identified through our outreach work. Partners and participants typically include agency representatives, representatives from the timber industry and organized labor, watershed councils, local community economic development organizations, elected officials, the media, and others. In 2003 we sponsored two different field tours and community forums that highlighted watershed restoration and restoration forestry on federal forests in western Oregon. In 2004, we hope to sponsor 3 to 4 field tours. One of these tours is already tentatively scheduled at a restoration forestry project on the Willamette National Forest for June.

This grant will help us in our efforts to outreach in rural areas, with a special emphasis on eastern Lane County, build relationships with labor unions that have traditionally opposed forest protection, and engage stakeholders in a vision that works by showing them how restoration forestry can move agencies away from conflict associated with old-growth logging and get forests back to work.

Oregon Toxics Alliance (September 2003)
website

Grant Started: September 15th, 2003
Grant Ended: December 15th 2003
Community funds raised as of Dec 15th: $295!
Grant is met!

Description:
Oregon Toxics Alliance is a grassroots organization working to eliminate contamination and unnecessary toxics use and the harm they cause to human health and the environment. OTA supports citizens’ efforts to avert the dangers of toxics use in their communities throughout Oregon.

Toxic rail yard contamination exists here in Eugene where initial investigations by the State’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in 1995 led to the discovery of groundwater contamination from chemicals – diesel fuels, solvents and heavy metals - that can cause severe health problems. OTA has brought together a coalition of concerned Eugene residents from River Road, Bethel, Trainsong and Whiteaker neighborhoods to understand and address health hazards caused by contamination at the Eugene rail yard. This coalition represents over 20,000 people. The objective of the OTA’s work is to assist Eugene residents to play an active role in key decisions about protecting the health of local families threatened by toxic contamination from the rail yard. OTA believes that Eugene residents should have a role at the table along with state agencies, the City, and Union Pacific Railroad to develop a viable clean-up plan for the Eugene rail yard.

Support from Helios and our matching donors will enable OTA to prepare plain-language summaries of the lengthy and complex health risk assessment prepared by Union Pacific Railroad for review by the Rail Road Pollution Coalition and the neighbors. The coalition can use these summaries to determine if the assessment truly measures the health threats to the neighborhood. OTA will then assist the coalition make scientifically sound recommendations to the Department of Environmental Quality for additional air and water sampling to safeguard human and environmental health.

WETLANDS: West Eugene Transportation, Land and Neighborhood Design Solutions
website

Grant Started: November 19th, 2003
Grant Ended: Feburary 19th 2004
Community funds raised as of Dec 17th: $260
Grant is met!

Description:
WETLANDS is working to stop the West Eugene Parkway by monitoring the Environmental Impact Statement process, preparing a federal lawsuit, and taking citizens on tours of the West Eugene Wetlands. The WEP is one of the most illegal highways ever proposed in the US, and WETLANDS has done extremely detailed work to document the legal obstacles to its approval by the Federal Highway Administration (currently slated for mid-2004).

WETLANDS has crafted a land use, transportation, energy and environment alternative to the highway that is posted on our website (http://www.efn.org/~wep) The WETLANDS alternative would transfer the land purchased for the road to the West Eugene Wetlands restoration efforts, fix existing roads (particularly West 11th, Beltline and Highway 99), add a few modest roads, bring Bus Rapid Transit routes to west and north Eugene, zoning shifts for mixed use neighborhoods, and improve bicycling conditions.

This grant would allow us to publish color maps of the alternative and an accompanying detailed report to distribute it to neighborhood organizations, environmental groups, elected officials and transportation officials.

The alternative was developed by reviewing the history of the WEP (which dates to the 1950s), attending official meetings where critical details were disclosed, extensive field work along the route, input from numerous citizens, groups, and participants in the official process, examining history of successful and unsuccessful highway fights in other communities and federal legal issues on transportation and environmental impacts. Printed publication will facilitate review of these suggestions by the broader community.

Ultimately, cancellation of the WEP will force a serious, regional discussion of sustainability that involves the entire community at the very least, it will force a major revision for long term planning for the region.

River Road Repair

Grant Started: December 18th, 2003
Grant Ended: March 18th 2003
Community funds raised as of March 3rd: $250
Grant is Met!

Description:
The objective of the River Road Repair project is to beautify and “repair” a somewhat depressed neighborhood commercial strip. We hope it will inspire other similar improvements throughout our neighborhood. Why a mural? Beautifying the commercial strip benefits businesses, residents, and the neighborhood as a whole. Businesses benefit because the mural helps create a more desirable ambiance in the immediate area. Residents gain something nice to look at on their way home. The mural has already become a focal point for neighborhood pride.

The backdrop of the painting depicts a vision of River Road that we’d love to see made manifest: a pedestrian-friendly urban scene with a small cafe, neighborhood center, food store, bike shop, and light rail car. The picture includes food crops, flower boxes, fruit and vegetables for sale, and people shopping, eating, and visiting. In fact, nearly every person shown in the mural lives in the River Road neighborhood. Drop by and see if you recognize someone you know.

At this time, about two-thirds of the project is done. The grant from Helios will cover half the cost of the “local grocery” section of the painting. When completed, the mural will cover the entire south wall of the Goodwill building, approximately 15 x 100 feet. The artist, Jan Spencer, plans to continue work when the weather permits (next summer). Individuals or businesses who donate $100 or more can have their name on the wall as part of the “community bulletin board.”