This month we invite you to our premier event, Welcome Home Hour of Hope, to celebrate voices from our community. And with Spring underway, we're all about the garden - ours and yours.

Join us for an inspiring evening celebrating voices from our community. The 5th Annual Welcome Home Hour of Hope will be held May 30, 2024, 5:30-7:30pm at the Sentinel Hotel, 614 SW 11th Avenue, Portland, OR 97205.  This is an opportunity to come together and raise funds to support our neighbors.

Together we can create a future where everyone has safe shelter and healthy food, and where our children are cared for and our seniors are engaged.

Parking is FREE at The Sentinel for this event!

If you like games of chance — and honestly, who doesn’t? — then the Welcome Home Raffle is for you!

The raffle draw will happen at Welcome Home event, but you do not need to be present to win. Tickets are $100 and the exciting options are:  

2 tickets on Alaska Airlines
Open-ended dates
Anywhere they fly.

1-week stay at a Luxury Resort in Mexico includes:
Choice of 2 property locations (Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Riviera Nayarit). A wide choice of dates throughout the year 2024-2025. Sleeps 2-4 guests, and a variety of lodging options.

2 prime tickets to a Trailblazers basketball game

We are lucky to have a garden plot right on Multnomah Village’s high street that grows 1,500 pounds of fresh produce each year, thanks to the help of our dedicated volunteers. Everything that is produced in this garden goes straight to our Free Food Market for distribution to neighbors in need of healthy food.  

But we can only grow so much. The Scattered Garden program helps “grow” our garden community. If you have space to grow produce, please consider being a Scattered Garden-er. We’ll even give you some free plants to get you started!

For more information on plant give-aways and volunteering in our Production Garden, click the link below to receive updates or visit our website to learn more about how to get involved.  

Learning about gardening during Earth Day festivities in Multnomah Village

The day was a wonderful mix of family activities, community clean up, and live music. We had so much fun introducing children to gardening! Children painted a pot at Thinker Toys then got to plant seeds in their pot, thanks to a donation from Portland Nursery.

Special thanks to volunteer Ariel Wisch-Schute for donating the dirt, her time and her gardening know-how to answer everyone's questions.

RHBA Shred & Recycling & Food Drive

We would like to give a huge thanks to the Raleigh Hills Business Association for including a food drive as part of their Shred and Recycling event on April 20th. The drive collected over 540 pounds of food, or the equivalent of 452 meals! Donations like this support our Free Food Market, which is experiencing the highest level of need we’ve seen in decades.  

Thanks to all who donated! 

SW Hope ended on a high (and a little wet) note with the 5K Walk & Run at Oregon Episcopal School on April 6. Almost 200 people were registered in this annual event. Given the drizzly weather, some people opted to "participate virtually." For those who showed up on the beautiful OES campus, it was fun as always. Huge thanks to Tyler Dudley and the entire Missio Community for organizing and volunteering!

Other bright spots were a fantastic Empty Bowls event at our future home on Barbur Boulevard, which brought in $1000 more than last year! Event Chair Colette Chatterton has big plans for next year, so stay tuned.

We had some bittersweet news during the campaign. A long-time NH supporter passed away several weeks ago and bestowed a generous gift in his will. He was an ardent supporter of food security and of SW Hope in particular, encouraging his friends and neighbors to the be part of the cause even during the pandemic years. His gift is an enduring legacy of support for the Free Food Market and our neighbors.

Overall, we are still somewhat short of our $75,000 goal, but donations are still coming in from our partners.

If you're interested in serving on the SW Hope planning committee, please let us know: development@nhpdx.org

Allison, Steve and Lori participated live and in person at this year's SW Hope 5K!

Inspiring a Child's Next Chapter

The first step to helping young children become strong, confident readers is access to books.

Each year The Children’s Book Bank at SMART Reading provides every student in our Head Start and Early Head Start programs with a bundle of 12 books for them to take home and keep. Head Start staff went the extra mile to make sure each child got a special book bag that reflects and supports their unique life experiences and background.

Developing early reading habits is part of our goal to provide a good learning experience, which helps children stay healthy, be happy, grow well, develop nicely, and do better in school.

Thank you to the SMART Reading program for their support!

Members of the Senior Center recently toured the Chinese Gardens, a popular destination during the spring.

May marks Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. 

AANHPI Month was recognized by President Joe Biden on April 30, 2021. It was originally known as Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Month, which was officially recognized by former President Barack Obama in 2009, until 2021. 

Below are some events happening around Portland to celebrate and honor AANHPI Heritage Month. 

An excerpt from the Positive Charge! PDX newsletter:

Every Monday and Thursday, two volunteer superstars make a run from the Safeway Distribution Center to the Neighborhood House Free Food Market, in conjunction with Positive Charge! PDX’s Two Can Tuesday initiative. 

Paul Elsner and Joe Greear pack their car trunks with boxes filled with a variety of food products. Since starting the run in November of 2022, Paul and Joe have picked up and delivered some 22,000 pounds of food!

Despite the enormous value they are providing through their generous gift of time, Paul and Joe count their blessings when it comes to their volunteer efforts.

Monday's volunteer, Paul, is usually accompanied by his beautiful Irish Setter, LeRoy. “LeRoy and I both find it richly rewarding and frankly, a lotta fun,” Paul said. “It is such a small effort on our part, but I assure you, LeRoy and I both feel richly compensated."

Likewise, Thursday's volunteer, Joe, finds that, in giving, he receives. “I love my volunteer work with Positive Charge! PDX. The volunteers at Neighborhood House are helpful, and they say that the recipients are really grateful because most donated food from food drives is canned or packaged food. I am so glad that I found this opportunity to give back to my community.”

Thanks to Joe, Paul and all the amazing drivers with Two Can Tuesday!

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please consider forwarding it to a friend! We love sharing amazing stories with our community.