The Gardens Are Growing

Common Grounds, the Horizons Community Gardens have come alive. The Humboldt Garden in Bingen, lower photo, has produced more than 700 pounds of healthy food so far this season for the Bingen food bank and more is coming. The Skyline Garden, upper photo, is the pride and joy of more than a dozen families at Rhine Village apartment complex.
The Horizons garden team is already looking for new garden sites to develop for 2009. One likely site will be a children's garden at the Youth Center in White Salmon.

Welcome to the Horizons Blog for the communities of Bingen and White Salmon in Western Klickitat County, WA

Horizons Program overview

Horizons is a community leadership program aimed at reducing poverty in small rural communities. It is funded by the Northwest Area Foundation and facilitated through Washington State University. Bingen and White Salmon are fortunate that they are eligible for this program.

The Community Circles phase was completed this spring when many participants attended several sessions to understand poverty and develop ideas to reduce it. Following that, four members of our community attended three days of training in Moses Lake, shown in the picture. One person, Bruce Bolme, received intensive media and public relations training. The other three people, Zoe Campbell, Ubaldo Hernandez and Wendi Zeober, received Leadership Plenty instruction.

Leadership Plenty is being offered this summer and will be offered again this fall. Participants in the Community Circles and Leadership Plenty will then work together to lead a community visioning process. That process will produce a community vision that will result in solid action on leadership and poverty.

Common Grounds Community Gardens have arrived in Bingen and White Salmon

The Food and Education Action Team of the Horizons Program in Bingen and White Salmon is now the Common Grounds Team. The team has been meeting weekly, and sometimes more often, planning and promoting our community gardens. We are proceeding with two gardens. Humboldt Garden is near Daubenspeck Park in Bingen and Skyline Garden is next to the Rhine Village apartment complex in White Salmon. Each garden will contain plots for about 24 families.
Garden plots are four feet wide and range from 10 to 25 feet in length. The cost to each gardener is one dollar per foot of length with the money going to pay for water and some basic tools. Registration began Saturday April 19. The next registration day is Saturday April 26 from 10 a.m. to noon and will take place at each site. Both gardens are scheduled to be ready and open for gardening on April 28.
Many volunteers, including a local Brownie troop and a crew of community service workers, have helped with all the work prepareing the gardens. On April 19, volunteers using heavy equipment moved a donated shed to the Skyline Garden to be used for tool and material storage. Of course, more volunteers are very welcome. Call Bruce Bolme at 493-8202 or Timi Keene at 493-5263 to lend a hand or learn more about the gardens.

Horizons Program Sponsors Michael Shuman Workshop

On April 15, Michael Shuman, nationally known author of Going Local and The Small Mart Revolution, addressed a group of about 60 Washington citizens in a workshop on How We Can Build a Prosperous Local Economy. At the workshop held at the Grace Baptist Church in White Salmon, Michael presented ideas on what local communities can do to create vibrant, self-reliant, community-based economic networks. He also highlighted trends in the national and global economy and explained how consumers, investors, policymakers and others can revitalize their own communities.

Horizons Program Sponsors a Global Classroom Course

From March 20 through April 17, several citizens of Bingen and White Salmon attended a global classroom course with the title Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. It was a global classroom because the course lectures were broadcast on the internet simultaneously all over the globe from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students had to be early risers to attend each 90 minute class which began at 7 a.m. local time. Grass roots leaders attending the course learned about overcoming personal limitations and expanding their capacity for listening, observing, creating and facilitating action, first at the personal level, then expanding it to the group, institutional and finally global levels.

WGAP Supports the Local Horizons Program

WGAP or Washington Gorge Action Programs has agreed to be the fiscal sponsor for the Horizons Program activitie in the Bingen - White Salmon area, including our community gardens. WGAP will be the custodian of grant monies, donations and garden fees for the local Horizons Program. As Horizons activities increase, those funds will be used for education and training as well as community gardens. Soon we will be making an announcement about the Northside Community Education Project.

Dr. Donna Beegle Workshop on Generational Poverty

SEE POVERTY…Be the Difference!

That is the title of the book by Dr. Donna Beegle. On Oct 17, 2007, at the Grace Baptist Church in White Salmon, she presented a workshop on generational poverty and how to help people move out of it. There was a great turnout from many different social services and agencies, including Horizons. Donna heads an organization, Communication Across Barriers (www.combarriers.com). This site, and her book, explore common myths and stereotypes about people who live in poverty.

The workshop highlighted elements of poverty that people who are not poor often don’t recognize. One example is the world-view and concepts that poverty teaches, and how it is very different from that of non-poor people. An important component of understanding generational poverty is to recognize that the preferred communication and learning style is not the same as those of the middle class. Oral culture is most often found in poverty situations, and it emphasizes their interconnection with the environment and the people in it. They are highly attuned to their senses and pay much attention to the sensory information received from the world. This is the first and inborn preference of humans.

On the other hand, print culture is a learned way of relating to the world. It involves process and analysis – the breaking down of things according to parts.

The exercises we did at the workshop, particularly the Personal Socio-Economic Status, was very enlightening to us.

For more information about Donna and her work, check out her website, listed above, and consult her excellent book, also mentioned above.

Going - Going - NOT Gone

One of our intrepid community coaches for the Horizons program has retired. While we will miss Linda Williams as an official coach, we can still benefit from her expertise as a Master Gardener. We expect to learn a lot from her as we engage in our ambitious community gardens project this spring.

Community Gardens Are Coming to Bingen and White Salmon

On Saturday November 3, 2007 many Bingen – White Salmon Horizons community members attended a visioning session at the Pioneer Center. We used that day-long session to form Action Teams for the specific areas that the people at the Action Forum most wanted to see in their communities.

The Food and Garden Education Action Team was one of the favorite activities. The original team consisted of Jay Anderson, Bruce Bolme, Zoë Campbell, Timi Keene, and Debbie Olson. Since the visioning session, we’re delighted to have new members Brenda Spring, Clair Hook, and Lorena Lowell join the team.

This team decided that the best way to educate the community about food and gardening was to create a community garden project and have a variety of classes on local food production, nutrition, and preservation.

We developed criteria for a good garden site, and requested our communities to identify sites that would meet those criteria. The response was terrific, and we had 10 sites to look at and choose from.

Three sites had the desired location, access, water, and represented our communities very well. One is near Daubenspeck Park in Bingen. It has a storage shed, and is partially fenced. It has good pedestrian access for Bingen residents and can provide hands-on experience in food growing. About 12 garden plots, 4 ft x 20 ft, will be available.

Another is adjacent to Rhine Village, a low-income housing unit in White Salmon. Many residents are interested in gardening, and this will be their first opportunity to get their hands dirty and produce clean healthy food for themselves. This site is large enough for at least 16 4x20 plots.

The third site is on the grounds of Bambinos, a bilingual learning center for children. This location is already fenced, and includes a house for educational classes and a kitchen for learning and doing food preservation. The garage can be used for equipment storage. About 12 plots will be available here. It has good pedestrian access for many White Salmon residents, and the children at the center can have their own garden space. They will learn about food from seed to mouth, and have a better understanding of what gardening means for humans.

How to choose? Which site and which people get a community garden? In order to maximize opportunity for poverty reduction, for nutritional education, and gardening experience, we decided to S T R E T C H our capability and sponsor community gardens at all three sites. The Columbia High School agriculture department has offered to roto-till each parcel and to provide plant starts from their greenhouse.

The Team will be providing hand tools and an irrigation system at each site, plus a storage shed and deer fencing if needed, to the limit of our capability. We are asking the people and local businesses in our communities to S T R E T C H their capability as well and be generous with their time, their energy and enthusiasm, and tools and gardening equipment that they might be willing to share or donate. These community gardens are a team effort. With the active involvement of our communities we can have a win-win experience.

Gorge Grown Food Network [www.gorgegrown.com] and the Master Gardener program of WSU Extension have offered their excellent coaching and technical support. We also have the model of a successful community garden in Hood River sponsored by La Clinica to provide ideas and oohs and aahs.

All the plots will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, while taking care that land is available for children at each site.

Our Community Moves From Vision to Action

After completing the Community Circles phase and the Action Forum phase, the Horizons Program moved into the Visioning phase. On Saturday November 3, 2007, many Bingen – White Salmon Horizons community members attended a visioning session at the Pioneer Center in White Salmon. Our facilitators were the very capable and effective Monica Babine and Dee Christensen from WSU Extension. Attendees reviewed the work done during several community circles earlier in the year and many focus areas were identified and then prioritized for future action. After discussion and deliberation, the top four Action Items were: Affordable Housing; Food and Garden Education; the Northside Community Education program; and Transformational Change Agency. Each attendee chose to join the Action Team of their favorite Action Item. It was tempting to want to join more than one. Each Action Team will promote work activities that fall within its focus area.

The steering committee that provides oversight of all Horizons activities in the Bingen – White Salmon area consists of Anne Goranson-Salas, Bruce Bolme, Deborah Grove, Martin Campos-Davis, Timi Keene, Ubaldo Hernandez, and Zoe Campbell. The group meets monthly, usually at Worksource in White Salmon. The groups next meeting is scheduled for January 24 at 10 a.m. Visitors and volunteers are always welcome. For more information you can call 493-5020 and ask for Anne.

Horizons Vision and Planning Event

Greetings to Horizons Participants and future Horizons Participants
We gathered your ideas and suggestions to make Bingen and White Salmon a better community and we want to share them with you. And, we want you to select the high priority action items to work on first.
Please join us at our Horizons Community Project of Visionary and Strategic Planning. Together, let's build a better place to live!
We are meeting at the Pioneer Center this Saturday,
November 3, 2007, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Lunch will be provided.
The Pioneer Center is located at 501 NE Washington Street in White Salmon.
Please invite your friends who live in this community.
Thanks,
Your steering committee for Bingen and White Salmon

Washington Gorge Action Programs

Washington Gorge Action Programs is a non-profit, serving the Klickitat & Skamania, Washington communities as an action agency for the public benefit of the following:

# Community Services
# Family Services
# Weatherization
# Emergency Assistance
# Emergency Services
# Food Assistance
# Emergency Shelter
# Housing Development
# Domestic Violece
# Sexual Assault


Click Here for the Washington Gorge Action Programs website.

WorkSource: Central Washington

You can visit the WorkSource centers directly. Select the location below to learn about contacting them, and what you will find when you visit them:

* WorkSource Columbia Gorge
* WorkSource Goldendale Affiliate
* WorkSource Sunnyside
* WorkSource Toppenish Affiliate
* WorkSource Yakima
* WorkSource Kittitas

* WorkSource Central Washington

Our Vision

The OneStop Workforce Partnership of Central Washington will…

1. Be Customer / Consumer Driven
2. Utilize Integrated Technology Systems
3. Have Accessibility, i.e. Easy Access (also for special needs) and be easily
recognizable
4. Share Resources and Current, Updated Information
5. Emphasize Co-Ownership and Interdependency Between Partners
6. Be Outcome Based, Using Quality Improvement Strategies
7. Each Partner Organization will offer Access to Identified Levels of Core
Services.

Our Mission

To provide an effective, comprehensive, and fully integrated delivery system of services for successful employment. To bring together business, economic development, employment, training, education, labor, and social services to share responsibility for universal access and workforce development. To share resources to increase service delivery capacity and efficiency, and provide access to information and services across organizational lines.

Membership to the OneStop Workforce Partnership of Central Washington is open to all interested parties. Anyone interested in becoming a member of the partnership should submit a letter of interest to the full membership,

What Services are available?

There is a dependable menu of services that may be directly offered at one or more locations:

For the Job Seeker...

* Resource Room - FREE access to computers, phones, fax machines, copiers, and Internet, all for your use in resume writing and job search activities.
* Job Search Assistance - Let our staff and resources help match you with a job suited to your skills and career needs.
* Workshops - Several FREE workshops are available. Topics include writing effective resumes, interviewing, dressing for success, financial planning, and more.
* Unemployment Insurance Information - You can file a claim for unemployment insurance simply by dialing 1-800-362-4636. More information is available at gotoui.com, or from our WorkSource centers.
* Recruitments and Job Fairs - Many businesses come directly to us to fill their hiring needs. Make sure we have your resume, so that we can call on you when those opportunities arise. And watch for information about job fairs in your area.
* Career counseling and assessment - Our experienced staff can help you determine what sort of career you are best suited for, and what you can do to advance to an even better job.
* Transitional assistance (dislocated workers) - If you have lost your job because of a lay-off or business closure, let us help get you back into the working world as quickly and as successfully as possible. We may even be able to help finance your training for a new career.
* Information on job trends and labor market data
* Veterans services
* Help in finding federal or state dollars to cover some or all of the costs of training
* Information about employment and training providers to help you make informed choices
* employer assistance through recruitment and pre-screening of applicants

For the business / employer...

* Automated or assisted job posting
* Recruitment and pre-screening of applicants.
* Unemployment Insurance information - how to reduce your premium burden.
* Information on wages, benefits and labor market data
* Infomation about state taxes.
* Human Resources - Let our staff augment, or act as your HR Department.
* Tax Credits - There are many ways you can earn significant tax credits, while training new employees to fill your open positions.
* Customized training - Need special training for your employees, so you can grow your business and stay competitive? Contact us for information about how we can help.

These services are offered by a number of partner organizations who participate in this one-stop system. The cooperation among these partners makes the blend of these services seamless to you, the customer.

Where are the access points?

You will find many of these services, and/or information on how to access them in person, here on our website.

Klickitat County: Environmental Health Services

Our Mission

Improving People's Health by Reducing Exposures to Environmental Hazards. This is accomplished by:

* maintaining a safe supply of food and drinking water
* discovering the mechanisms of environmentally related diseases
* treating and disposing of solid and toxic wastes
* reducing air, water, food, and noise pollution

Click Here for the website.

Klickitat County: Personal Health Services

Our Mission

We work to promote and protect the health of Washington citizens. This is accomplished by:

* Improve health through disease and injury prevention, immunization, and newborn
screening for prenatal disease programs.
* Prevent illness and death caused by behavior choices
* Provide education to help people make good health decisions
* Control communicable diseases
* Strengthen families

Click Here for the Personal Health Services website.

Native Americans & Economic Development

Native American entrepreneurial activity near and on reservations is growing nationally, and can help Native communities overcome poverty and promote healthy tribal economies.

Highlights key findings from research and interviews with more than 60 Native and non-Native leaders in entrepreneurship development. (60 pages, published 2004)

Click Here to access the pdf document related to Native American entrepreneurial activities.

If you click on the title of this post it will take you to the NWAF Solutions Depot, which gives you access to how-to-guides, case studies, and more to reduce poverty in your community.

Rural Assistance Center: Health Services

What is the Rural Assistance Center?

A product of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Rural Initiative, the Rural Assistance Center (RAC) was established in December 2002 as a rural health and human services "information portal." RAC helps rural communities and other rural stakeholders access the full range of available programs, funding, and research that can enable them to provide quality health and human services to rural residents.

Click on the title of this post to access the RAC website!

2007 Great Strides: Four Case Studies

Inspiring stories about communities recognized by the Northwest Area Foundation for making significant progress toward reducing poverty long term. Other communities can replicate or adapt these poverty-reduction strategies.

2007 award-winning communities, highlighted in this publication, include:

- City of Westhope, ND
- City of Independence, OR
- 4-H Club - Big Quil Enterprises (Brinnon/Quilcene, WA)
- White Earth Land Recovery Project and White Earth Investment Initiative (White Earth Reservation, MN)

Click Here for the pdf document of the 2007 Great Strides: Four Case Studies.

By clicking on the title of this post you can access the NWAF Solution Depot, which gives you access to how-to-guides, case studies, and more to address poverty reduction in your community.

Case Study: Brinnon & Quilcene, WA; Youthful Energy

These two adjoining rural communities hugging the Olympic Mountains used a combination of social assets and leadership to reverse plummeting wages. An economic downturn in the timber industry motivated Quilcene/Brinnon to build up its aquaculture industry, which has caused a boost in wages by 16 percent between 1995 and 2005 and provided job development programs for youth. Half of the youth live in reported poverty, yet they have become the catalysts for change in this community.

Click Here for the pdf document of this exciting youth entrepreneurship initiative.

By clicking on the title of this post you can go to the NWAF Solution Depot, where you can access how-to-guides, case studies, and more related to reducing poverty in your community.