A poetry post surrounded by peonies in the Beaumont neighborhood
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An informational meeting about Villages, presented jointly by Northeast Village PDX and NorthStar Village, is scheduled for
Sunday, June 7
, at 11 a.m. in the Oscar Romero Room of St. Andrew's Community Center, 806 NE Alberta.
A second Village 101 will be offered on Tuesday, June 16, 4:00-5:30 p.m., at Rose City Park Presbyterian Church, 1907 NE 45th Ave.
Host Your Own Village 101
Would you like to host a 101 presentation in your home for friends and neighbors? Contact Jane Braunger to arrange for a speaker and materials. janebraunger@gmail.com, or 503-528-9768.
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When you're lucky, May can bring a colorful visitor to a shrub under your living room window.
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Picnic in July: Invite Your Friends and Neighbors
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On the evening of Wednesday July 8, Northeast Village PDX is skipping its monthly meeting and throwing a party: a Village Picnic in Wilshire Park. This will be the perfect informal setting for introducing your friends and neighbors to our organization, so please save the date and, while you're at it, invite some of your friends. In addition to friends, bring a dish to share, a non-alcoholic beverage, and chairs or blankets. Paper goods and utensils will be provided. Come to Area B on the south side of the park between 5:00 and 5:30.
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Not all Villages operate in the same way or offer exactly the same services, but this video from Monadnock at Home in New Hampshire nicely describes how one Village serves and supports its members.
Play Monadnock at Home Video
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Join your fellow Village supporters at our next general meeting, 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 10, at Rose City Park United Methodist Church, 5830 NE Alameda, just east of NE Sandy and NE 57th.
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| The Villages NW Connection:
Getting a Little Help From Our Friends |
The Village movement in the greater Portland area has an unusual structure, much like a bicycle wheel with a hub and spokes. In this case, a relatively new organization, Villages NW (VNW), is the hub and the seven local, currently developing Villages are the spokes. Membership in VNW is not required, but it offers certain attractive benefits that caused our Village to vote to join last fall.
Among other things, Villages NW:
- has sought and received 503(c)(3) status so that all donations to our Villages can be tax deductible;
- is providing $2 million in general liability insurance, paid for by VNW until each Village opens for business;
- is setting up standardized financial record keeping, donor records, grant tracking, and data collection;
- promotes resource and idea sharing among the Villages and helps facilitate strategic partnerships with other organizations that already serve the elderly.
Because the "hub" and "spokes" are all new organizations, developing at the same time and often exploring uncharted territory, communication must be frequent. Recently our Coordinating Council met with VNW executive director Anne Andler and board chair Dr. Alison Bahr to discuss questions about recommended administrative software, banking and bookkeeping policies and procedures, communications with donors, and the like. As we get closer to opening for business, we will probably have even more questions.
Meanwhile, the VNW's Transportation Task Force has been developing some exciting possibilities for handling rides for our members, the most-requested service in all the Villages, nationwide. (See the article below.)
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Partnering With Ride Connection:
An Intriguing Possibility
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Our representative on the Villages NW Transportation Task Force, Don Tarbutton, recently reported on the group's progress in developing a proposal for handling rides for all Village members in the greater Portland area. The group has recommended partnering with Ride Connection, which provides 435,000 rides a year and already partners with 33 other organizations. The way it might work is this: Our Villages would recruit drivers who are willing to drive their own cars to take members to medical appointments, grocery store visits, and other destinations. Then Ride Connection and Villages NW would do background checks, train our drivers, and provide safety checks of our vehicles. Meanwhile, the Transportation Task Force is preparing driver and rider manuals that could be used by the Villages and is investigating ride-scheduling software. For Ride Connection, having the Villages as partners would provide a way to extend its services, and the Villages would have their training and safety needs addressed. All of this is still in the research and development stage, but the possibilities the task force has presented are intriguing.
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Hooray for Our Village Builders
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To date, Village builders have laid a solid foundation for our fund-raising campaign. As we go to press (or the digital equivalent), the following people have donated $2,960, which brings us 40 percent of the way to our goal of $7,500. Way to go!
| Visionaries ($250+) Jane Braunger & John P. Braunger Carolyn M. Buan Robert J. Dyer & Robert C. Durand Robert & Julie Granger Craig & Anne Lindsay
Sustainers ($100 - $249) Frank & Margaret Baldwin Trust Joan F. Bouwes & Nicolaas Bouwes, Sr. Margaret E. Cahalan Dan L. & Nancy J. Clausen Vonnie & Joe Condon Eileen A. Dolan Donna Dorsey Linda Dreyer Teresa J. Frackes John L. Hammond & Alice K. Simpson Sarah T. Hershey Patricia Linde Linda & Larry Monk Byron Spice & Kathryn Hansman-Spice Marcia Tate & Walter Quade Partners ($50 - $99) Lynne Coward Todd Coward Penelope Kavan Edana Laine, Todd Arnold Philip & Marjorie Walters Friends ($10 - $49) Susan Danielson Barbara Goldberg Sam S. Hamill Gillian P. Herbert & Rita J. Silverberg Ann B. Zawaski & Helena A. Lee |
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HELP US TURN UP THE HEAT!
We know we can count on the rest of you to help us reach our goal. If you haven't given yet, please do so today by sending a check, made payable to:
Villages NW fbo NE Willage PDX, and send to: NE Village PDX c/o Margaret Baldwin P.O. Box 18175 Portland, OR
97218-0175
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