Solicited Grants (2011-Current)

Caldera

Trained 40 Camp Caldera staff on child development and management, relationship-based mentoring, safety, and team-building.  Caldera provides professional mentoring, research-based arts and environmental education curriculum, and a unique camp experience that enables youth to think and learn through art, nature and creativity.  The camp experience is the cornerstone of Caldera’s program.  From sixth grade through high school, students from urban and rural schools come together at Caldera, a place that is magical and inspiring.   The work that occurs at camp is carried through the year with weekly art/mentoring classes and week-long artists residencies at the schools the youth attend.

Cascade Forest Conservancy

This program brings under-served middle and high school students on exciting stewardship trips in the Cascades. In 2020, we aim to lead 15 field days with 9 schools and community organizations, serving at least 220 students.

On one- or two-day outings, students in our program learn about forest ecology, take part in restoration projects, and collect information that is used for real forest and wildlife management efforts of Cascade Forest Conservancy and the U.S. Forest Service.

Causa of Oregon

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Renewal Scholarships through Oregon DACA Coalition to ensure that 30 undocumented youth have the opportunity to apply for DACA support, a key step in stabilizing lives.

Chess for Success

The mission of Chess for Success (CFS) is to help children develop the skills necessary for success in school and life by learning chess.  This grant provides after-school chess clubs for 70 K-8th grade students in the Portland metro area for a year. The schools served have an average of 73% of the students qualifying for free or reduced food programs.  The students receive chess instruction; t-shirts that are designed by club members; chess sets to take home at the end of the year; and free entrance to CFS tournaments. Schools also receive all chess equipment for the clubs, including chess sets, demonstration boards, and a chess library for the school.  Teachers from the school are paid to coach the clubs and the program is free for all students.

Childhaven

We served 364 children ages 0-5 who were either at-risk or victims of child abuse and neglect, and 403 of their caregivers in 2016-2017. We expect to double the number of children served in the next five years.  Funds from Lamb Foundation will help Childhaven implement a Continuum of Care model to strategically change the way Childhaven administers trauma-informed treatment programs to underserved children and families.

Childhaven

Childhaven is one of only two agencies in Washington State that provides scientifically-based therapy programs for very young abused and neglected children, providing the care and support they need to build skills for healthy lives.  This grant supports the purchase of a 15 passenger van properly equipped to carry 13 children and two teachers. The van removes an important barrier to access to service and also allows teachers to interact with families on a twice-daily basis.

Children's Center of Clackamas County

The Children’s Center’s Foundations of Hope initiative answers a critical community need by expanding our clinical team, allowing us to provide up to 600 child abuse medical assessments and related services per year, as well as drug screenings to children exposed to illegal drugs in their homes.  This expansion effort enables us to provide workshops and education, resources and referrals for up to 30,000 community members each year.

Clackamas Service Center, Inc.

Core support allows them to provide improved client services and referrals.  Funding allows replacement of depleted reserves of groceries and clothing, to provide more hot meals, and the ability to grow programs that serve the low-income community that has depended on them for over 40 years.

Color Outside the Lines

Our objective is to offer weekly classes to foster youth, covering a wide array of art forms and enriching outings that serve the dual purpose of providing foster youth with outlets for self-expression and healing, and also providing needed support.

Community Connection of NE Oregon, Inc.

This grant made it possible for the two food banks in Wallowa County to have adequate food and supplies throughout the year, including off-season and off-holiday times, to assist an average of over 285 people per month.  In addition, they were able to purchase meat processing for donated beef, which greatly added to the amount of protein-rich food available, and they were able to pay more attention to providing healthy food choices.  In addition to much-needed food, the food bank program helps with necessary staples that food stamps does not pay for.  (Such as toilet paper, feminine hygiene, toiletries, etc.)

Community Development Corporation of Oregon

Outcome of the Rockwood Speaks project: 1) needs assessment of what types of jobs our neighbors want to be trained for, 2) needs assessment of what barriers they face in gaining access to training, & 3) identification of local leaders to oversee training programs.

Community Transitional School

Furthers support of the mission to provide Pre-K – 8th grade students from homeless and transient families throughout the greater Portland metro area with a quality education that promotes their academic and personal growth.

Community Transitional School

Provides daily education services and two meals a day for 180-210 homeless children living in the Greater Portland Metro, every school day for the 2020-21 school year.

Community Transitional School

Community Transitional School  teaches Portland area children who are at risk for school failure due to their families’ unstable lives of poverty, transience and homelessness.  The school provides many of life’s basics: breakfast and lunch, clothes, school supplies and bus rides to and from school, no matter how often students move around the metro area.

The PreK-8th grade school’s goal is to provide a stable learning place for these children so they can begin to see that they have choices, and so they can begin to gather the skills they need to make them.  Almost all of the students come with large gaps in their education.  This general operations grant allowed the school to meet their budget and continue to serve an increased number of homeless children and youth.   The 2011-2012 school year saw a huge increase in the number of students served, as well as those on the waiting list, highlighting the need to expand.

5th and 6th graders wrote free-form poems titled “Wishes I Keep to Myself.” Here are excerpts from four of them:

Wish I was a normal girl
in this world
Someone who has
a dad, lives in a house
and has a friend.

Wish I didn’t have to worry
if me and
my family will find somewhere
to sleep tonight.

Wish to be appreciated for the way I am —
the guy who likes the
opposite of everyone else.

Wish mom had a job
to care for us,
and to have money to live
in this heavy town.

Community Transitional School

Each school year, Community Transitional School (CTS) teaches 180-220 children, in Pre-K -8th grades, from throughout the Portland metro area whose access to an education is severely compromised due to the homelessness their families are experiencing.  CTS provides homeless students at high risk for school failure with the academic, social and behavioral skills they need to succeed in school.  In addition to improving their educational outcomes these same skills will improve their ability to successfully function in the world and build a more stable future.