Path Home empowers homeless families with children to get back into housing - and stay there. Every year, Path Home serves more than 500 families in the Portland area per year across all programs including Family Village Emergency Shelter, Rapid Re-housing, Homeless Prevention, and Basic Income.

The innovative, trauma-informed design of Path Home’s Family Village shelter provides families with children opportunities for playing, healing, and rebuilding while also providing a wide range of services and support to move families back into housing. Families say that the care, compassion, and dignity they experience working with Path Home are what propel them to get up every day and do the hard work to make changes their lives for the better. Path Home’s model is working: 96% of families who stay in shelter at Family Village move into housing compared to 50% or less at the average Portland shelter.

Coming to the U.S. as a newly arrived immigrant or refugee can be a daunting experience. The Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) has 45+ years of experience empowering these newcomers. This year we have responded to increasing community need for equitable access to housing, early learning, community education and access to vaccination options in response to the pandemic, and digital learning for young people in the new virtual world. We have also initiated our resettlement program for Afghan arrivals, started our Welcome Center in rural Ontario/Oregon, and broadened the reach of our legal services to address the additional challenges of new arrivals. Our expanded programming has increased our capacity to build new beginnings for all immigrants and refugees calling Oregon their home.

Walking Mountains Science Center staff and board have been focused on our equity efforts within the community. This past year our board of directors made the decision to eliminate fees for our Field Science Programs in public schools. This has been an important step in our efforts to make natural science and sustainability education accessible to all members of our community. Additionally, Walking Mountains continues to lead a collaborative effort working to break down barriers for underrepresented groups in accessing the outdoors. Currently, we are partnering with 20 organizations to provide shared outdoor experiences for people of all ages, abilities and cultures free of charge.

Outside the Bowl is dedicated to alleviating hunger and malnourishment in children. They pack and ship over 150,000 VitaKidz nutritious meals every day to areas in need. This year, after the earthquake in Haiti, Outside the Bowl provided over 87,000 hot meals to those in need. In South Africa, they distributed 38,000 meals by private airplane while roads were blocked by riots.

They opened a long-awaited Super Kitchen in Juarez Mexico and also completed the first production run of Wow Bar!, a new tool in fighting hunger that is ready-to-eat and easy to distribute. Outside the Bowl continues to establish Instant Meal Distribution Centers, which will lead to more ministry partnerships to help provide meals in remote areas of Guatamala, the Domican Republic, and Haiti.

In June, Central City Concern opened Cedar Commons, their first housing development offering clinical services and supports for people facing unique and complex mental health needs. The voices of clients experiencing homelessness informed the service delivery model at Cedar Commons, which features supportive on-site staff, opportunities for community-building and even communal gardening boxes.

Woodwell Climate Research Center is working with under-resourced communities around the country to ensure those disproportionately impacted by climate change have access to the cutting-edge science needed for adaptation and resilience. Working in partnership with city officials and local advocates, Woodwell Climate provides free, tailored assessments of flood, heat, and other climate risks. This year, our pilot project with three municipalities expanded to encompass an additional ten communities.

Harbourton Foundation’s partnership with the Hope Center of the Eagle River Valley supports 13 mental health clinicians who provide therapeutic support to students in 15 schools, including an expansion of services this fall for elementary students. During the first semester of the 21/22 school year, 538 students (K-12) connected with Hope Center school-based clinicians for ongoing individual or group therapy sessions. The school-based clinicians documented over 5,300 interactions that include individual therapy sessions, family and group sessions, initial assessments, crisis assessments and case management. The school team is responding to intense behavioral health issues with elementary aged students who are suffering from high levels of family stress; the school team has completed suicide risk assessments for elementary aged children as young as 6 years old.

In the wake of the pandemic and disruptions to our food system, Food Recovery Network (FRN), with the support of partners such as Harbourton Foundation, collectively recovered and donated more than 1.05 million pounds of surplus food, the equivalent of over 875,000 meals donated to nearly 200,000 unique individuals experiencing hunger in 2020, FRN’s largest recovery year to date. Food Recovery Network is grateful for the support from the Harbourton Foundation as they seek to recover surplus food to serve everyone experiencing hunger in the United States.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020 Mindful Life Project watched as our underserved school communities struggled to find resources to support student learning as well as the emotional and mental well being of teachers, students and families.

Bringing private and philanthropic donations together to work collectively for Oregonians whose communities have been leveled by wildfires this season.