The students are excited to learn more about American culture, practice their English, and discover the Northwest. Some students take classes in downtown Portland on weekday mornings and enjoy group activities in the afternoons. Others are free to follow the everyday flow of life with your family. Either way, your student would be treated as another family member, doing chores, biking around the neighborhood, and participating in your family’s favorite summer activities. ANDEO matches students and families based on age, gender, nationality, and shared interests. The final choice to host a particular student is always yours! The students bring their own spending money and are covered by health insurance. Hosting is free, and ANDEO provides a small stipend to help families cover activities, extra food or utility use.

For more information, or to apply to host, please visit ANDEO’s website at www.andeo.org, email Paulene Hedgpeth atpaulene@andeo.org, or call 503.274.1776.

As in prior years, metals were separated and Portland Disposal delivered the container for which Metro Metals paid $338.40, to be divided between both neighborhoods. This effort received a boost this year when Andrew Hunt, from North Tabor, stepped up to manage a deconstruction area allowing more metals to be recovered. With enough volunteers next year we can extend the deconstruction area to be able to recover more of the hard plastics and wood as well for recycling.

The Rebuilding Center once again picked up a lot of materials we set aside and from the Resale Area. Green Century provided electronics recycling. McFarlanes once again allowed us to collect limited yard debris and wood waste by providing us a container for each. Robert Jordan delivered 4 pickup loads of recovered hard plastics to Far West Fibers, Bing Wong delivered 2 truckloads, Amy Chomowicz and Brian Brumley also delivered a truckload and Paul Leistner delivered several carloads of styrofoam to Recology. Deb Scott pitched in to haul the accumulated cardboard across the street to her house and delivered it later to Far West Fibers. And several other volunteers unhappy to see items from the Resale area headed to the dumpsters pitched in at the end to deliver carloads of useable items to Goodwill and the ARC. Due to the large amount of recyclables we are unable to arrange pickups for and serviceable items left in the Resale area at the end of the event each year the committee is looking to rent one or two UHaul type trailers next year.

Fees from participants amounted to $3420 which was evenly split between the two neighborhoods. For North Tabor this is our only fundraiser for the year. We managed to keep our reimbursable expenses (school rental, dumpster rentals, promotion, snacks, tools, etc) below our limit so we expect to get all our expenses reimbursed from the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Metro waived the fees on the six dumpsters that were taken to the landfill, Portland Disposal gave us a great rate on the dumpster rental and hauling and that together with the two containers provided free of charge by McFarlanes helped us stay under budget. Laurelhurst Cafe provided coffee, tea, bottled water and delicious coffee cakes for the volunteers supplemented by the awesome, hot from the oven, cookies provided by volunteer Nancy Norby.

Comments from the collected feedback forms were for the most part very favorable. “nicely organized”, “It was great!”, “Thank You++”, “Grateful for this service!”, “Thank you, I arrange yardwork around this annual event.”, “Fabulous, lovely volunteers!”, “Great!”, “Keep up the great work!”, “Let’s keep doing this!”, “Great effort by volunteers–we appreciate it!”, “This was so awesome! Thanks!”, “Friendly help”, “Well organized, as usual!”, “I so appreciate you and all your hard work!”, “It was so easy!” were among the many positive comments. A few feedback forms indicated those participants felt the fees were too high, but more individuals actually donated more than the fee requested feeling they were getting a bargain. Others who had brought hazardous waste were unhappy and the committee apologizes for the erroneous information submitted in error to the Southeast Examiner in Mt Tabor’s meeting summary. And a hitch with one of the haulers delayed opening on time. But as a whole the event was quite a success and ran smoothly for the most part.

At least 30 volunteers showed up to help out during the event, many veterans of past cleanups and lots of new faces. The committee would like to identify volunteers early on who would like to take on crew leader positions to begin working soon on plans for next year’s event. If you would like to participate in the planning and organizing for next year’s cleanup, please email cleanup@northtabor.org or leave a message with your contact information at 503-928-4655. Let’s work together to make next year’s cleanup even more successful and sustainable.

The North Tabor Community, Health, and Safety Fair is a fun community event seeking to build a stronger sense of neighborhood in the North Tabor area. Another function of the fair is to engage the Montavilla, Sunnyside, Rose City Park, Mt. Tabor, and Laurelhurst neighborhoods by providing an event where residents in these communities can come together and become more familiar with each other and what the area as a whole has to offer.   We have a number of organizations that will be offering education, resources, and fun interaction; and we are hoping for confirmation from a few more.  We are excited to have Outdoor School, Elders in Action, Friends of Trees, Petco, Portland Community College Medical Assisting Program, Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon, North Tabor Neighborhood Association, The Mural Project, Humaucracy, AARP and SOLV each hosting a booth at the fair. We have asked organizations to consider generously donating a prize for our raffle and we are hoping that some of our local businesses will also donate. You can look forward to winning such wonderful items as a Gift Tree, an Outdoor School T-shirt, a $50 gift certificate to the Adventure WILD Summer Day Camp, a First Aid Kit, and many other fun prizes.
This fair is supported by a grant from the SE Uplift Coalition, by the North Tabor Neighborhood Association, and by the generous support of these wonderful community partners that are participating in the fair. There will also be live music, artists displaying their creations, arts and crafts activities for everyone, neighborhood oriented interactive displays, and fun learning games; all with a focus on community.

North Tabor residents have volunteered to play guitar for kids and help make mini-maracas, to provide stamping and water color pencil art, to guide fair-goers through the “Know Your Neighborhood” game, the neighborhood map, and the neighborhood input board; and to help make bottle cap art magnets. Petco will provide a Wheel of Fortune Game with prizes for all, which costs a $1 to play, but all the proceeds go to their foundation for animals. We hope to have a bean bag game, a spin-the-wheel game, and a mini bowling game at the fair and each with a community, health, and safety theme. Other possible crafts are origami, paper flower making, face painting, and chalk drawing.

If you or a business you know would like to donate an item to our raffle, please contact us.  Additionally, we need help with raffle ticket sellers, craft assistants (whatever your talent is!), setting up assistance, helping the organizations to their spot, entryway greeting, take down and clean up assistance, putting the games together, and help at the game stations.

If you would like to volunteer please e-mail sustainability@northtabor.org  or call and leave a message at 503-928-4655. For updated information on the fair, keep an eye out for the posters that will go up next month around the neighborhood and check back at http://northtabor.org/committes/sustainability/community-health-safety-fair/

The second half of our project will be the Community Health and Safety Fair to be held on Saturday, June 16 in the back parking lot of the Glisan Fred Meyer store.  We would love to have more volunteers for this great event.  Please contact us at sustainability@northtabor.org if you have ideas or would like to help out.