WE ARE PORTLAND
AWARDS
CLICK HERE FOR 2011 HONOREES
AND HERE FOR 2012 HONOREES
We Are Portland Projects – City Bureau Partners
Portland does so many things well, doing them well into
our City’s energetically diverse future means equitably
engaging our many newcomer communities.
Seven City of Portland bureaus are leading the way:
Bureau of Transportation Planning & Sustainability
Parks & Recreation East Precinct Police
Neighborhood Involvement Environmental Services
Portland Fire & Rescue
Sunday Parkways 
Transportation Bureau
Corner cops – Summer Youth Leadership
Portland has an international reputation for compassion.
About 100 political asylees settle here per month.
Families from chilly hillside Nepal refugee camps, boys raised in Kenya's
UN tent cities, girls who survived Rwanda's awful genocide, are very-very
vulnerable. Our schools do their best, but urban American kid culture is not kind.
Our program partners Portland's Transportation Bureau and IRCO, working
closely with Asian and African elders and activists, gets these kids out of dense
East Portland apartment complexes. into nicer parts of town, and into seeing
themselves as civically involved young Portlanders.
We need these kids leading, not following. They need to have some good fun too.
Bureau of Parks & Recreation Portland
East Portland Community Center Fire & Rescue
Nike Newcomer Girls Soccer World Cup Soccer Tournament
Portland Parks & Rec Commissioner Nick Fish pumping up 221 teens,
6 community organizations, and 4 City bureaus, all partnering up
for (Immigrant & Refugee) World Cup Soccer tournament.
Healthy & Successful Bhutani Families
Cultural & Civic Integration Workshop Series
Many if not most Old Worlders, live as if family (not the individual) is
the fundemental unit of society. A healthy family makes happy kids.
Because of this cultural difference, and because Portland's public
institutions tend to empower kids in ways distinct and distant from
their parents - catching parents up with the expectations of their new
country, is essential if we want to prevent teens from leading our families.
Partners Portland Parks & Rec and East Precinct Police, working closely
with David Douglas High School ESL Dept, with Lutheran Community
Services, and with the Association of Bhutanese in Oregon, puts on an
annual 12-week workshop series for parents eager to get all this right.
Making healthy and happy newcomer families now saves us tons of
money and misery, later.
Bhutanese community activist Som Nath Subedi,
Commissioner Amanda Fritz, David Douglas ESL
Teacher Anne Downing graduate another new Portlander
at East Portland Community Center
East Precinct Police Bureau
"This is Your Police Precinct"
Community policing and parenting presentations
Officers Paisley and Browning with Capt. Mark Kruger and Bhutanese parents
Kareni, Burmani, and Zomi kids
.
Because armed men in uniform did not benefit family life in old homelands,
and because close and constructive relations with law enforcement is central
to healthycommunity here -- East Police Precinct welcomes new Portlander
parents and their their kids, particularly their teens, to "Your Police Precinct"
presentations.
Commanders and street cops talk about their duties to all Portlanders, show off
tidy offices, cool cars, and fast motorcycles. Police officers share pictures of their
families. We all talk about parents' and kids' responsibilities in making a safe and
happy neighborhood.
Office of Neighborhood Involvement
Engage o8, o9, 2010 & 2011 Leadership Academies
Civic leadership and organizational development grants to Latino
Network-Verde; to Immigrant & Refugee Community of Oregon;
to the Center for Intercultural Organizing; Urban League of Port-
land; and to NAYA Portland Youth & Elders Council.
All New Portlander projects featured on these pages are the work
of Office of Neighborhood Involvement/IRCO ENGAGE elders and
activists. Want to work with them?
East Portland Neighborhood Office
Dr. Baher Butti (with US Sen. Jeff Markeley)
president of Iraqi Society of Oregon, recipient
of an East Portland Action Plan grant for Iraqi
family social and cultural integration workshops
Lents Neighborhood Association
Jess and daughter, and Cora,
Lents Neighborhood Association
board members. Kind and careful
Portland-style problem-solvers. Click here for the full Chinese chicken story.
Click here for the full import of the critical Equity issue, underlying this story.
City of Portland, Bureau of Environmental Services
Community Watershed Stewardship Program
Newcomer community garden grants
Portlanders take pride in our respect for our natural
environment. Returning rain water from rooftops through living soil to healthy
rivers is central to who, and to how we are. Old worlders resettling here likewise
know about caring, about conserving, for our precious little planet.
Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services' Watershed Stewardship Program is
pulling us all together by awarding small communty gardening grants to our local
Zomi refugee association and to Immigrant & Refugee Community of Oregon's
Healthy Elders Program.
These investments in new Portlanders provide family nutrition; work and social
interaction for home-bound wives and elders; environmental education and civic
engagement for anewcomer community eager to integrate into the life of our city.
Professor Cavales assessing Burma refugee
community strengths with Dr. Pe Myint, with
Zomi American Association elders Mung G. Thang
and Pastor Zam King (all 3 in blue). In white: Iraqi
Society of Ore. president Dr Baher Butti and Polo.
Bureau of Planning & Sustainability
The Portland Plan
"Planning an Equitable City"
Because - as Mayor Adams often says - Portland was not half of what we
are now, the last time City government set out a comprehensive 30-year
urban development plan: So getting it right today really matters.
In 1980, Portland was not half our size now, and not nearly as inclusive of
our disabled or ethnic minority residents of all sexual orientations. Back then,
Portland was not as rich inimmigrant cultural capital.
Catching up our neglected communities, integrating newly annexed neigh-
borhoods and newly arrived Portlanders, requires a careful eye and a deliberate
hand on equitably planning our shared future.
Portland's city planners are committed to getting this right.
Check out Planning & Sustainability Bureau's Facebook.
Fotos of planning our City in community forums:
Mayor Adams getting City planning manager Stanley Perkins of the Portland Plan
schooled in Ghana drum Deborah Stein developing Community Involvement Committee
by Master Mashud our Education Initiative and Planning Bureau outreach staff
Marty Stockton
