2 hours of help, a whole lot of hope: WestSide Baby “frenzy”
(WSB photo from December visit to WestSide Baby)
Can you spare two hours this Thursday night? WestSide Baby needs your help to sort donated items (like the ones above) that are needed by hundreds of local families:
WestSide Baby is opening on Thursday, April 16th from 7-9, for our monthly “After Hours” sorting frenzy. Grab a friend and join us for an evening of sorting donations, socializing and making a difference in the community.
It is very helpful for us to know if you are coming though so we can prepare with staff and projects. Please RSVP to Sarah@westsidebaby.org. Children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult and it is especially important for us to know if minors are coming so we can prepare appropriate jobs for them.
We also have an ongoing need for larger size diapers (Sizes 4-6) and Pull-ups (Sizes 3t and 4t).
WestSide Baby HQ is at 10032 15th SW (map).
Happening now: Kiwanis food drive at White Center Food Bank
Till 8 pm tonight, Kiwanis Division 26 volunteers are at the White Center Food Bank (which serves part of West Seattle, too), collecting donations. As mentioned before, food-bank donations count for extra through the end of this month because of a special nationwide partial-match program – so if you take food/money to them now, it’s worth even more than face value. Here’s a map to WCFB. We’re off to get a photo.
ADDED 6:16 PM: Photo added atop the post — that’s Barbara Connor from the Rainier Valley Kiwanis, taking first watch at the donation station in the WCFB parking lot. Just drive right in off 8th SW – it’s a drive-up food drive to boot! Again, they’re there till 8 pm.
Happening tonight: Food drive; drinking dialogue; 34th Dems
From the WSB Events calendar:
FOOD DRIVE: Tonight’s the night Kiwanis Division 26 volunteers will be at the White Center Food Bank, 5:30-8 pm, hoping to see you drop by with donations of nonperishable food ($ donations welcome too). Here’s a map.
DRINKING DIALOGUE: Last week, we brought you the story of Chris Volkmann of Olympia, who has written a book with son Toren Volkmann about his teen (and beyond) drinking days. She is funny and practical, not preachy, and told us she hopes families will “just come have a dialogue” as she and Toren, now 26, speak at Madison Middle School tonight at 7 pm.
34TH DISTRICT DEMOCRATS: Last meeting, they endorsed County Council Chair Dow Constantine in his run for County Executive; tonight, they hear from one of his opponents, County Councilmember Larry Phillips. A resolution about “clean campaigns” is on the agenda too. 7 pm, The Hall at Fauntleroy.
This Wednesday night: Help the local Kiwanis Club fight hunger
We’ve mentioned it before, it’s on the WSB Events calendar, and now it’s just two days away, so it’s reminder time – this Wednesday night, local Kiwanians will be at the White Center Food Bank to receive your donations. Not only does the WCFB help fight hunger in WC, it’s also accountable for assisting everyone in West Seattle south of SW Myrtle who needs food-bank help:
Members of the Division 26 Kiwanis in Seattle would like to invite you to bring non-perishable foods to the White Center Food Bank on Wednesday evening, April 8, 2009 from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. Members of the Kiwanis will be stationed outside the food bank at 10829 8th Avenue SW [map] under a canopy to collect your donations.
Kiwanis International is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time.
The White Center Food Bank says the most needed foods are Hamburger Helper and Rice-a-Roni type products as well as canned meat (not tuna), canned fruit, cereal, and jelly. The White Center Food Bank serves a diverse ethnic population so ethnic foods are always welcome. The food bank also accepts $5 and $10 gift cards from Safeway, QFC or Albertsons. Cash donations can be sent to the White Center Food Bank at 10829 8th Avenue SW, Seattle, WA 98146. To donate online, go to www.whitecenterfoodbank.org.
Kiwanis Club of West Seattle president Michael LaFranchi stopped by our table at the Gathering of Neighbors on Saturday and mentioned that club members also were at two local grocery stores that day, collecting food. Donations to the WCFB and West Seattle Food Bank count extra through the end of this month because of the Feinstein Challenge, so everything you give includes a built-in bonus.
Want to be part of a new West Seattle P-Patch? Deadline’s here!
From the WSB inbox, an update on the P-Patch plan in The Junction, and the above photo, with a call for action RIGHT NOW, if you are interested:
Friends of West Seattle Genesee P-Patch
Urgent! We need your help now! West Seattle has been an under-served community for p-patches, and in recent years has lost two of them. There are currently more than 100 West Seattle residents on a wait list for a p-patch plot. There are also no city-run p-patches north of SW Edmunds St. Here is a great opportunity for West Seattlites to come together and volunteer to help local residents in need of a plot. Currently, West Seattle p-patchers must seek sites outside of our area. We are looking for volunteers for the following tasks, especially if you already have the tools and know-how:
Demo a small section of concrete sidewalk and reclaim a few more square feet of garden space.
Build a hogwire fence (we will secure the materials).Haul away shrubs and brush in your truck.General labor such as digging, tilling, and taking out shrubs, brush, and 3 trees.
If you have a group of young ones that you can lead in making garden stepping stones or would like to build short sections of picket fence panels, I want to hear from you!
This is the final weekend before the opportunity for you to contribute to your community through this project closes. Please contact me as soon as possible at wscc.grounds@hotmail.com or call me at 206-280-5015. Aaron, Genesee P-Patch coordinator.
Got gardenable land? Need some? Urban Land Army needs YOU!
Let no potential garden go ungardened! Gatewood gardener Sandy from Urban Land Army sends word of the new project Land Link, which is looking for YOU:
www.urbanlandarmy.com. To contact us with questions: hq@urbanlandarmy.com
Sandy adds, “I will also be starting a series on the Urban Land Army blog next week called ‘Grow It Yourself: The First Season.’ From my Gatewood test garden, I’ll walk people through how to grow 5 vegetables and 5 herbs – from ripping out the lawn to seeding and harvesting and preserving. Complete with photos, video, and fun reading!”
Citywide call: Hundreds of volunteers needed for one night
Just received this – according to the online signup form, they only have about a fifth of the 500-plus volunteers they need:
Seattle Homeless Needs Assessment
You still have time to sign up to participate in the first Homeless Needs Assessment in Seattle!
With the University of Washington providing technical expertise, the Homeless Needs Assessment is a joint effort coordinated by the City of Seattle, United Way of King County and the Committee to End Homelessness in King County. On Monday, April 13, from 9 p.m. to midnight, teams of volunteers will be deployed all over Seattle to survey the unsheltered homeless people. All volunteers must attend a short training session prior to participating in the assessment. Please see the list of training options below.
The Homeless Needs Assessment will empower people who are homeless to have a direct voice in articulating what they need to end their homelessness. The information we gather will help improve the services we provide to people who are homeless.
Please visit www.seattle.gov/homelessneeds for more information and to sign up as a volunteer team member or team leader.
Questions? Contact Heather at homelessneeds@seattle.gov or 386-1084.
There are numerous options for training sessions to attend, starting as soon as tonight. The online signup form is here. Click ahead to see the training-session dates/times:Read More
This Saturday: Two chances to dig in and help
First, out of the WSB inbox, from Robin:
Chief Sealth High School students and members of the Nature Consortium are hosting another work party at the West Duwamish Greenbelt. It will be held this Saturday April 4th from 10am to 2pm. We will meet in the Cooper Elementary School parking lot. We need all the help we can get, so come join us!
Second – this Saturday is also the monthly work party for Friends of Lincoln Park, who will meet at 9 am in the parking lot across from SW Rose. (Every week, we list work parties in the West Seattle Weekend Lineup, published on Friday mornings.)
Digging into garden season: Two West Seattle notes
GOT PLANTS? Local animal-helping nonprofit Furry Faces Foundation is getting ready for another season of fundraising plant sales (photo above is from one of its 2008 events) and has this request for you:
Donate Your Extra Garden Plants & Save Lives!
Furry Faces Foundation’s 9th Annual Plant Sale Season is in full swing. Funds raised from our plant sales support our ‘It’s Hip To Be Snipped’ program and ‘Oliver’s Fund,’ which assists companion animals whose humans are on a fixed income.
Do you have healthy plants that require division? Never made it out of the pot and into the ground? Are you (re)- landscaping & have extra plants? Looking for a good home for these plants? Please donate them to the animals.
Thank you for thinking of Furry Faces Foundation! For more information, please e-mail furryfaces@hotmail.com
F3 will start the selling with the Mother’s Day Hanging Basket Sale 10 am-4 pm May 2 and 3 in the courtyard outside Hotwire Coffee (WSB sponsor) – for $20, pick out your own plants and build your own basket – “soil, hanging baskets, and caring coaching are all included,” Teri says. Then two weekends of even-bigger plant sales happen May 16-17 and June 6-7; more on those later. Now, our second note:
SUNSET SHOWCASE: West Seattle gardener and writer Willi Galloway is featured in the latest edition of Sunset magazine — you can see the pages on Willi’s site, DigginFood.com (one of the 100 West Seattle-based websites whose latest posts are linked from our Blogs page). Willi tells WSB, “We were super excited to represent Seattle — and West Seattle in particular — in Sunset!” Keep an eye on Willi’s site – she’s promising a series of reports on other West Seattle food gardens later this year. (Besides gardening and writing her own site, Willi also is West Coast editor for Organic Gardening magazine and a regular panelist for the Greendays gardening discussions on KUOW, 10 am Tuesdays.)
Four more fun, food, and fundraising events tonight
Those are the Derby Brats – young skaters, based in West Seattle, who compete in junior roller derby (two age groups, 6-10 and 11-18) – and tonight, as noted in recent weeks in the WSB Forums, they’re raising money with a spaghetti feed at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church next to West Seattle High School, 5 pm. You can find out more about them at their MySpace site. Tonight’s other dinner fundraisers include the Fauntleroy Children’s Center fundraising dinner and silent auction at 5:30 pm at the Hall at Fauntleroy, with emcees including Mayor Nickels; more info here.
the WSHS Baseball/Softball dinner and auction, 5:30 pm, and the Denny Middle School jazz dinner/auction, 6 pm, both at their respective schools.
Also tonight: Coffee, dessert, music to support Camp Long
(WSB photo, January 2008, madrona alongside Schurman Rock)
We shared news of this event earlier this week but failed to get it into the West Seattle Weekend Lineup so here’s another reminder: Tonight at Camp Long, 7 pm, a coffeehouse and dessert-auction fundraiser featuring music by Jim Page and Grant Dermody. $10 per adult; kids over 5 are $5, and will be invited to participate in a naturalist program during the event. While Camp Long is a beautiful, sprawling treasure, its main entrance is a “blink and you miss it” spot along 35th, so here’s a map to help, if needed. (P.S. Registration is under way for Camp Long’s spring events; you can see the catalog here.)
TEAM Delridge tonight: Food for thought – and action
That was the turnout tonight at Southwest Community Center for TEAM Delridge – community members getting together to envision future neighborhood improvements, including healthier food – since it is, after all, part of the King County Food and Fitness Initiative:
Two more TEAM Delridge meetings are planned, April 20th and May 18th, locations to be announced.
2 more Delridge events to note this week — both potlucks, in fact. First comes the monthly FEEST Community Potluck at 5:30 pm Wednesday, Youngstown Arts Center, which, according to an e-mail alert, is “offering youth-prepared organic dishes, an opportunity to build community with youth members of the Food Education Empowerment and Sustainability Team, and a glance at King County Food and Fitness Initiative’s proposed Community Action Plan to improve and sustain resources in the Delridge and White Center neighborhoods.” Then Saturday, it’s the Community Potluck event organized by the volunteers working toward a Delridge Produce Cooperative, this Saturday from 11 am-2 pm, also at Youngstown (read more here).
Sign up now – for something you’ll hopefully never have to do
Be on the lookout for that display around West Seattle in the months to come. It’s part of the next phase of an effort that really started to rev up last year. If you were a WSB’er last spring/summer, you may recall our coverage of special events introducing neighborhoods to community meeting places (like this one), designated just in case of major disasters — someplace you could go to get connected with information and help, if all the other channels fail. There currently are eight such neighborhood gathering spots around West Seattle which are now dubbed “emergency-communication hubs.”
Saturday morning, many of the volunteers who are working on this got together in Morgan Junction for a discussion including guests from the city and county — and that’s where we all learned about help that’s needed right now for a “corps” that hopefully will never have to spring into action – the Public Health Reserve Corps. Don’t let the name scare you off – they’re looking to sign up volunteers who are NOT health pros, too — read on for more about that, and about the state of disaster readiness in local neighborhoods:Read More
Getting the word out: Water Day today, World TB Day Tuesday
Volunteers tabled and walked along Alki today in honor of World Water Day — to make sure you know that something we take for granted — a clean, safe water supply — is still elusive for way too many people worldwide. Find out more here (including info about an event at Seward Park on May 30th, in which participants will try to walk 5 kilometers carrying 5 gallons of water — which water1st.org notes is “the average walk made by women and children in poor countries who lack access to safe, convenient water supplies”). Another day of awareness with local involvement is just two days away — World TB Day on Tuesday, with local students helping put on a big event downtown:
The World TB Day event Tuesday night at Town Hall is free – and promises to be an eye-opener. Full details here. If you thought tuberculosis was a thing of the past – this King County-specific information alone will cure you of that notion. (The local rate, in fact, hit a 30-year high in 2007.) Student organizers also have been sending out TB info via Twitter – follow their tweets (and see the archives) at twitter.com/worldtbday.
Greenbelt cleanup: Can you pitch in too? Local students hope so!
As you probably noticed in the West Seattle Weekend Lineup, lots of work-party action in local greenspaces today, as is the case most Saturdays – but if you can spare some time TOMORROW, here’s a request we just received:
My name is Sam Westler and I go to Chief Sealth High School. A group of students along with myself are hosting a work party to remove the invasive plants in the West Duwamish Greenbelt. We are working from 10-4 on Sunday March 22nd, and we would like to get the word out to as many people as possible. Everyone is welcome to come help out. We are meeting in the Cooper Elementary School parking lot at ten.
If you haven’t been to Cooper, which is on Pigeon Point, here’s a map.
Today/tonight: Scouting for Food, Movies on the Wall, more
Reminder – The Viaduct is closed till 6 pm for the first day of its semiannual inspection; the Battery Street Tunnel is closed around the clock till early Monday morning. But why leave West Seattle? Highlights from the latest West Seattle Weekend Lineup include:
SCOUTING FOR FOOD – You may have received a door hanger about this; we reported on it two weeks ago. Local Boy Scouts will go door to door to collect food donations to help fight hunger; if they’re not in your neighborhood, you can still take donations to the West Seattle Food Bank (map) 10 am-2 pm.
FRY BREAD FOR JUSTICE – 10 am-5 pm at the new Duwamish Longhouse (map) – $20 donation, food and entertainment to help the tribe raise money to keep fighting for federal recognition.
CASUAL INDUSTREES SALE – This sassy West Seattle clothing business doesn’t have a regular storefront but it’s opening the doors for a big sale this weekend – 6205 SW Admiral (map), 10 am-6 pm today.
FREE MOVIE – “Napoleon Dynamite” is the grand finale of the first-ever Winter Indoor Movies on the Wall series presented in The Junction by local businesses (including WSB!) – free (but bring money for concessions and nonprofit-benefiting raffle), 7 pm, the new West Seattle Christian Church activity center (map), bring your own chair(s), doors open at 5:30 pm.
“ECLECTIC” MUSIC – That’s how guitarist Andre Feriante described the show he and others will present in the Admiral Theater‘s Listening Room series at 9 tonight ($12).
Much, more more in the WSWL.
Delridge Produce Co-op updates: Potluck plan, & Galena’s story
(From left, Delridge Produce Co-Op organizer Galena White, Nola [daughter of Jennifer Grant], board members Jennifer Grant and Ranette Iding, volunteer consultant Johnathan Oliver from Heart On My Sleeve)
The next big event for the volunteers working toward a Delridge Produce Cooperative is a community potluck (to which you’re invited!) one week from tomorrow, and they gathered to work on the plan last night at Pearls coffeehouse. Music, food, a raffle, and even a chili-making demonstration are planned for the event 11 am-2 pm (see the flyer on the Delridge Produce Cooperative home page) Saturday, March 28, at Youngstown Arts Center. Your role? Show up, with “healthy food” to share, and have fun. Meantime, co-op organizer Galena White recently wrote up a recap of how this all got started, in response to requests from other media looking into stories about the Delridge Produce Cooperative effort, and we want to share her story as an inspirational instance of one person who decided to stop “complaining” – and take action – see what she did, step by step:Read More
First jobless, now homeless: Sherry can’t keep Moon any more
That’s Moon the cat. Moon needs someplace to stay – short term or long term. His person, Sherry, lost her job, then got evicted this week, according to Delridge resident Paul Boyarin, who met Sherry at her recent yard sale. Now that she’s staying at an emergency shelter, she can’t keep Moon with her; the neighbor who’s watching him can’t keep him; Paul himself is maxed out with four foster cats; and local cat rescuers say they’re full to capacity right now. So Paul wonders if anyone in WSB-land would be interested in taking care of Moon, who’s about three years old, described as “very friendly and sweet” and “a well-loved indoor cat.” If you can help, here’s how to reach Paul: pzalic@yahoo.com
Almost spring: Help the West Seattle Edible Garden Fair grow!
Not only will there be a West Seattle Edible Garden Tour again this year, there’ll also be a West Seattle Edible Garden Fair too. And you can help it grow – by spending an hour and half with organizers this Sunday afternoon. The Edible Garden Fair, involving Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle and the city Department of Neighborhoods, is set for May 23rd at South Seattle Community College, a day of “presentations and panel discussions about growing food,” according to the CHoSS website. But before it comes to fruition, it’s time for planning and strategizing – and that’ll happen at 1:30 this Sunday in the Common House at Duwamish Cohousing (6000 17th SW; here’s a map).
| Comments Off on 2 hours of help, a whole lot of hope: WestSide Baby “frenzy”