Pacific Northwest News

Story by Laura Reinhardt. Photos by Reed Slattery.

Storms this week in the northwestern United States covered Washington state with ice and flooded Oregon towns and rivers. Temperatures in the region are warming, but thousands of people remain without power after snow and ice downed trees and power lines. Governors Gregoire (Washington) and Kitzhaber (Oregon) both declared states of emergency.

World Vision responds

World Vision has distributed essential supplies in lower-income neighborhoods hit hard by the storms. Supplies include 200-300 cases of water, 200 cases of warm clothing, 60 cases of blankets, and 44 cases of personal hygiene kits—items especially needed by families living without power.

With more rain expected this weekend and flood worries rising, World Vision is readying pallets of cleaning supplies such as mops, disinfectant, soap, trash bags, and floor cleaner. World Vision is reaching out to a network of community partners throughout the Pacific Northwest to assess the damage and greatest needs.

World Vision began serving people in need in the Pacific Northwest in 1990. Last year World Vision worked with nearly 500 partners to serve more than half a million people in the Northwest with essential supplies, building materials, youth empowerment projects, and help for students and teachers in low-income schools.

Power-outages take greatest toll on low-income families

World Vision is responding by distributing coats, jackets, hygiene kits, and water to some of our community partners in the hardest hit areas of Seattle. World Vision is particularly concerned about the most vulnerable population, among them children and seniors, who could be without power beyond the weekend.

For most people, a power outage is an uncomfortable inconvenience. But for families living in poverty or from paycheck to paycheck, it can be a calamity. A natural disaster can stretch already-thin resources to the breaking point.

"With hundreds of thousands of Puget Sound residents without power, it is easy to forget that even homeless shelters are without heat or electricity, putting the most vulnerable at risk," says Reed Slattery, World Vision's Pacific Northwest site manager. "One of our partners which provides shelter for homeless women and children has been struggling without power since Wednesday evening."

"The families we're trying to serve are the most vulnerable," says Reed. "We're getting them what they need to make it through this time."

How you can help

• Pray for families in the Pacific Northwest who are hampered by the snow and floods. Pray especially for the most vulnerable, including children and seniors.
• Donate to provide $150 worth of basics to U.S. children for only $25. Your gift helps deliver basics like new clothing, diapers, blankets, and shoes to help American children in poverty. Thanks to corporate product donations, your gift will multiply 6 times in value!

For more than 10 years, Boeing has supported local teachers and school children through the Boeing Books & Backpack drive. Boeing employees from Kent, Renton, the Seattle corridor, Everett, Auburn, and Frederickson donated more than $15,000--and school supplies totaling more than $45,000 in retail value--to help support World Vision's two local Teacher Resource Centers.

Boeing employees also gave of their time and energy by volunteering at World Vision's Storehouse in Fife to stuff 1,000 backpacks with school supplies for distribution to local area kids. Through the Teacher Resource Center, teachers from schools in which 70 percent or more of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch can "shop" twice a year to receive much-needed school supplies for the children in their classrooms.

 

 

Six World Vision volunteers and six employees recently dedicated an entire day to sprucing up the Seattle Teacher Resource Center at Salmon Creek Elementary School. Bright red, blue, and yellow bins were overflowing with essential school supplies, including pens, glue sticks, scissors, markers, and crayons, in preparation for the kickoff of this year's teacher shopping. The TRC opened to teachers on September 13.

After returning from the National Youth Empowerment Summit in July, Tacoma YEP delegates continued their advocacy efforts through a summer fellowship program that may lead to even more positive change in their community. The delegates organized a Community Action Training (CAT) to younger youth. They planned their curriculum module delivery, assigned tasks to each other, and received a CAT orientation, which included child protection training about bathroom procedures, general safety, and child abuse detection and reporting.

During the week of August 15-19, the delegates delivered this training to about a dozen youth from the Eastside Tacoma neighborhood at the Portland Avenue Community Center. The younger youth learned practical skills and received information on how to help solve the problems within their community. They rallied around the idea of combating gang violence in a positive manner. Their idea centered around offering a Fair Day, where they will invite kids ages 5-16 from the community to try out different sports and participate in a sports tournament for a day.

Together with the delegates, the younger youth will invite youth agencies to attend the Fair Day and give information about the services their organizations provide, along with the costs of youth-oriented activities in the community. They also will promote YEP and CAT as alternatives to gang violence
for youth.

At the end of the Fair Day, all participating youth will release balloons to bring awareness about young people who might drop out of school because of their achievement gap--and who might become involved in gang activity if preventive measures and actions are not taken. Fair Day is planned to take place in October.

"This is the first time that a Fair Day has been held to address the issue of gang violence on the Eastside," said Sheryl Blessing, youth development associate
in Tacoma. "It is a definite first for young people to plan it as well. Nothing like this has been done after previous summits...This Fair Day was thought of by the CAT youth and supported by the YEP delegates."

On September 12, members of Tacoma's YEP team presented their media project and policy recommendations to community leaders, including Tacoma City Councilman Marty Campbell.

After watching the video, Campbell said, "What was really neat about that was seeing Tacoma through your eyes. "

The team also informed city leaders about their upcoming October event, which originally was called "Fair Day" and now will be titled "Silence the Violence, Play for Peace." This will be the team's creative activism project to raise awareness about gang violence in East Tacoma. The delegates wanted to spread the word and to seek community support for the event.

METRO Parks staff member (and former World Vision staffer) Laura Rodriguez encouraged the YEP team to speak out about the things that they felt would help build a better community.

Kate Frazier, principal of Lister Elementary School, told the delegates: "Your voice is powerful. My commitment is to share this (information) with Lister staff."

Another community leader asked if the youth planned on pursuing advocacy on the local level, then asked if everyone could be notified when the YEP team makes these public appearances "so we can come and lend our support."

Campbell offered an open invitation to the YEP team to meet with the City Council.

Through the efforts of World Vision and partnership organizations, nearly 8,000 children in the Seattle area recently received backpacks filled with school supplies. The distribution events, held in multiple communities, were designed to help children be prepared for school, increasing their opportunity to be successful in the classroom.

In the SeaTac area, students attending a back-to-school fair also received free haircuts and dental checkups.

At Seattle's Concord Elementary School, World Vision teamed with the school district and Women of Vision to provide and distribute backpacks and supplies. Women of Vision is a national volunteer ministry of World Vision that mobilizes and unites women to help impoverished women and children.

World Vision also benefitted from the eighth-annual SchoolTools Drive, a partnership with Bartell Drug (which collected school supplies in bins at its 57 Seattle-area drugstores) and radio station Star 101.5 (which promoted the drive). In addition, the Seattle Storm of the WNBA promoted the drive at its August 28 home basketball game against the Los Angeles Sparks. The drive produced more than six pallets of donated supplies with a retail value of more than $30,000.

On August 17th, a beautiful sunny Pacific Northwest day, three of the YEP Tacoma delegates decided to volunteer their time at World Vision's Storehouse instead of sleeping in or hanging out with friends.

Under the supervision of Antonio Evans, they stuffed backpacks with essential school supplies in preparation to be distributed to local area children. They had a lot of fun and want to come back for another volunteer opportunity!