March 2023
From Village to Housing
Greetings Friends,
Last month, TWO Menlo Park Safe Rest Village Neighbors picked up their keys and moved into their new apartments! It’s incredible to see the dreams and plans of Cultivate Initiatives, the City of Portland, Multnomah County, and so many others coming to fruition!
Our Peer Support Specialist Elijah P. talks about this journey with enthusiasm. “When these neighbors came, they could hardly believe the village was real. They had been waiting a long time to get off the streets, and once here they started to believe they could finally move to a more permanent spot. When it actually happened, it was just awesome. Anything is possible when you're in a community that supports your transition goals.”
We’re so thrilled for these friends - and this is just the beginning!
Dining across Differences
We organized a series of dinner conversations called Table for12. At these tables were people who would otherwise rarely share a conversation, let alone a meal: housed and unhoused people, representing a diversity of backgrounds. The commonality that brought this group together was that they all live, work, or play around 122nd and Burnside.
These dinners were opportunities to explore our shared humanity across differences, identify strengths in our area, and discuss how to build connected communities. We believe that the starting point to solving complex challenges is the simple act of sharing meals and conversations together. Thank you to everyone who contributed to these conversations, to Jubilee Hall for hosting us, and to the Oregon Community Foundation for the support to make this possible!
Featured in Dwell!
It’s great to see innovative efforts like
the Menlo Park Safe Rest Village
being featured nationally in Dwell Magazine.
Talk about exposure!
How can you join in the change?
Don’t forget that you can still double your impact throughout this year! The Americas Foundation’s match adds an extra dollar to every dollar you donate. So if you donate $50, that means $100 total goes towards our initiatives. Every donation helps make these successes you read about here possible!
