Inspiring our Next Generation
Multnomah Education Service District Outdoor School
Hands up: who’s licked a slug? If you attended the sixth grade in Multnomah County, we’re betting you may have … or that you brought back some other camp stories from Outdoor School, a sleepaway environmental education program that’s become a legendary institution since its inception in 1966. Free to most participants and part of the annual sixth-grade curriculum throughout the county, Outdoor School and its annual team of more than 1,300 high school volunteer counselors ensure every student experiences and learns about the natural world at camps near Corbett and Sandy. Students make leaf rubbings, observe migratory birds, and examine invertebrates under a microscope. (And on a dare, some might even sample “Oregon escargot.”) There are other lessons too: away from home and outside of embedded social patterns, Outdoor School creates a safe space for personal growth. “Even the students who were troublemakers in the classroom opened up and had the time of their lives,” says Katie Kramer, who spent five springs as an Outdoor School counselor and special-needs volunteer. “They got a taste of being part of something bigger than themselves: a community.”
Arts & Culture
Northwest Film Center
In an era of Netflix and Hulu, it’s all too tempting to forgo the movie theater in favor of sweatpants and an easy chair. The Northwest Film Center offers a damn good reason to ignore that urge. An important regional resource for filmmakers, students, and visiting artists, the Northwest Film Center has been reminding us for 40 years that “film” embodies more than just the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Its hundreds of screenings each year include smaller films like “Pulp,” a short by an 11th grader questioning the violence in boxing, or The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground, a documentary about a Grammy-winning klezmer group that showed as part of the Jewish Film Festival. “Moving images are so central to the way our society operates,” says the center’s director, Bill Foster, “not just as entertainment, but as the documentation of social change and personal expression.” With classes like sound recording and screenwriting at its School of Film, the center inspires people of all ages to express themselves with movies. And each winter during the Portland International Film Festival, which drew a whopping 35,000 attendees in 2011, the Northwest Film Center spurs the rest of us to get out of the house and enjoy them.
Sustainable Planet
The Wetlands Conservancy
The next time you sit down to a plate of cedar-plank Pacific salmon for dinner, be sure to raise a glass to the Wetlands Conservancy. Without the group’s effort to educate the public about the importance of wetlands in everything from preventing flooding to their essential role in providing healthy habitats for salmon, your plate might well be empty. Over the course of its 30-year history, the Wetlands Conservancy has helped raise awareness about these sensitive marshy areas with posters, TV spots, and even on-the-ground guerrilla efforts like the neighborhood gathering it organized in June to educate Tigard residents with yards adjacent to the Roger Hart Wetland Preserve about how to plant and care for their land with the wetland in mind (not using pesticides that will run off into the fragile ecosystem, for example). This spring, the group ran an Aqua Plate Special at local restaurants and grocery stores to raise awareness, identifying seafood that depends on healthy Oregon estuaries. The effort also netted $9,000 in donations. “We want people to understand how wetlands are more than just really cool spaces,” says the group’s executive director, Esther Lev. “They provide functions that intersect with people’s lives.” The Wetlands Conservancy isn’t just sis-boom-bahing wetland preservation, though; it’s an active player in acquiring land. Since the conservancy was founded three decades ago, it has procured more than 1,600 acres around the state, including a preserve in Yaquina Bay and 56 acres in Tualatin. “The Wetlands Conservancy plays a hugely important role in conservation in Oregon,” says Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland. “There are a lot of land trusts out there, but the Wetlands Conservancy stands out because they bring science and stewardship to the lands they protect.”
Published: November 2011
Congratulations, Bobbie, for the recognition of your time and efforts for the women of Adelante! What a beautiful and moving tribute – I’m very happy for you and to have spent time with you!
What an honor it has been to work with Linda Huddle at Portland Community College. Linda spent her career advocating for at-risk youth. What started out as a pilot project with the Gates Foundation, the Gateway to College program at PCC is now part of large, growing network of 30+ Gateway to College sites at community colleges nationwide who work in partnership with their local school districts.
Kudos to Linda for this well deserved Lifetime Achievement Award and a special thanks to Pamela Blumenthal, PCC Interim Director of PCC Alternative Programs for nominating Linda and to Portland Monthly Magazine for recognizing outstanding non-profit organizations and professionals in the Portland Metropolitan area.
Dr. Craig Kolins
Interim President
Portland Community College Extended Learning Campus
Hurrah for Linda! I haven’t seen her for years, but she was always a humane presence in the nonprofit sector. While at Young Audiences, she made time to connect with art, kids, education and was a tireless advocate for the enduring strength of philanthropy and the positive impact on our kids. If your child has art in school, or is now an artist, Linda Wright had a hand in that success. Mazeltov!
Having worked with Linda Huddle at Gateway to College (one of the PCC Alternative Programs), I can tell you that she richly deserved the lifetime achievement award. She has helped so many disenfranchised students. I am so proud to know her and to work for one of the amazing programs she helped create.
Cheers to you for recognizing Linda Huddle’s years of time making PORTLAND A
better place to live. I am proud to be her friend!
Linda is a remarkable woman. She has a tireless dedication and optimism in helping so many young persons achieve their potential through her work. I am also proud to be her long-time friend. She has a great sense of humor and is always a ray of sunshine in the room.
I would like to add my Congratulations to Linda Wright. My so and I founded Friends of Baseball in 2005; an organization that insures equity for youth in under-served regions of Oregon through baseball and softball programs. Linda came to us early on with advise support and personal enthusiasm for our programs. In recent years she has become a valued member of our board. Who would have thought Linda would have assumed this additional load towards our organization; but she did in honor of her dad who coaches and her brothers who play our fair game. Linda just keeps on giving, I am honored as executive director to have her at my side!
I am privileged to know Barbara Rodriguez. Her humility is her strength and prompts her to give unselfishly to those in need. In the manner of all true heroes, she will steadfastly insist that by volunteering with Adelante she is only doing what is needed to help those who require the assistance. However, the truth of the matter is that most of us do not make our time and energy so easily available to others as does Barbara. Her selflessness is exemplary and how wonderful it is that you have seen the wisdom of extolling her virtue. Kudos to both Barbara and Portland Monthly.
Kudos to Beth Putz!!!! I’m gladly enthusiastic to say I work withAlbertina Kerr under the directorship of Beth and its been a great help being able to have such a hands on kind of person as a director. This article does her great justice, in examining how she is a leader for us in the field and the entire network of youth in our communities needing help to access their potentials. Its been great to see how our work really does impact the community, Beth is just a REALLY great example of how day in and day out her attitude and outlook remains for those she serves,and for now 13years worth! Great working with and being a member of a group with team directorship such as Beth’s! Our community thrives in leaps and bounds,finding potential and good in kids who many times are overlooked and their potential never tapped into, because of people like Beth!