More Amazing People! Deb and Jeff

We received a call from a woman who had been following our blog for a while. Deb and her husband, Jeff, were in the process of moving and had some extra things they no longer needed. Instead of donating them to a local charity where they could receive a tax write off they offered them to us to help with projects. They believed in what we are doing and wanted to help us continue the good work. Jeff even dropped the items off at our house. They donated painting supplies, yard tools and other miscellaneous construction items that will definitely make continuing to do what we do easier in the future.

A heartfelt THANK YOU to Deb and Jeff!! We were overwhelmed with your generosity and it just shows us time and time again, how many good people there are in the world.
Thank you so much and we wish you the best on your next stage in life.

Springboard Social Innovation Forum

On Wednesday, Michelle and I (Seth) attended the Springboard Social Innovation Forum that is held monthly at the Urban Grind Coffee House It was a tremendous gathering of groups and individuals that are doing what they can to make all of our communities better places to live, work and play. A Springboard's website motto: "Get enraged. Get engaged. Get busy." How cool of a motto is that?!?!?

From the Springboard website:
"The Springboard Social Innovation Forum offers a monthly event designed to support those interested in creating a better future. Our focus is to help practitioners or potential pratictioners of social projects push beyond discussion and debate into action. Each Forum will inspire and teach with ideas, powerful role models, and stories. Speakers, content experts, panels, and workshops will help you improve your strategies for planning and launching effective social ventures. The Forum will create a context to connect, learn, and take action around ideas that lead to tangible change—all in a venue designed for building community."

The speakers that night were Randy White from Bright Neighbor; Samantha Mafchir from MicroMentor; Skip Newberry from Portland Is Better Together and Amy Pearl from The ChangeXchange.

The first speaker was Randy White from Bright Neighbor. He was intelligent, energetic, and informative. When you go to the Portland Bright Neighbor site, you will need to creat a log-in, but please believe us when we tell you...it's worth it!

From Bright Neighbor's Portland website:
"Bright Neighbor is a Portland community system that helps Portlanders discover our neighbors, coordinate community projects and groups, share stuff, lend and track things, sell and barter stuff, network better, save money, learn new things like growing and preserving food, finding people that live near you with similar interests, ride-share, and much more."

We consider ourselves very like-minded with Bright Neighbor. We aspire to be a lot like Bright Neighbor when we grow up. The are a tremendous group of people and Randy White is a great community leader. Please check them out!

There were so many great ideas and people that there isn't enough space to write about it all here. Please check out the different links and find your path! We will add more about the other groups that spoke at this event and other groups that we learned about while attending the forum, in the near future so check back often!!