What we'll do

Let's meet with friends and frenemies for an evening of readings on wonderful works. Focus this meeting: Quest.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

If you like you may bring a work of art to share - any reading, video, etc. Participants may bring anything they like, no matter how recent, unknown, or unconventional, as long as it reminds us, somehow, of the potential grandeur of life. But there is no need to bring something - we have plenty of wonderful works available!

We will also have a talking circle, to check in and express our thoughts and feelings about what is truly important.

Visionary Society will provide light snacks and drinks. We'll gather at the apartment of an organizer (or other homey location).

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What we'll do

Solving climate change requires reducing carbon emissions. When you offset your footprint, you neutralize your emissions by protecting forests that absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
It’s easy to determine your carbon footprint, and how it compares to others.
Take 2 minutes and head over this site

Details Interest: Climate change
Purpose: Educate
Time: Under 5 minutes
Let us know how you rank when you tap ‘Complete’.
Build your helping network by inviting others to join.
Photo credit: Conservation International.

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What we'll do

Improve the welfare and reduce the population of feral and stray cats through spay/neuter programs and education.
Feral, stray and pet cats.. Vaccines. Healthier cats. Save money.

Details The mission of the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon is to improve the welfare and reduce the population of feral and stray cats through spay/neuter programs and education.
Also known as FCCO, we are a non-profit spay/neuter program that was founded in 1995. We have helped more than 100,000 cats and remain the only organization in the area dedicated to providing the level of services that we do for feral and stray cats. For each feral or stray cat in our care we request a donation of just $40, but never turn a caregiver away even if they cannot contribute. This program is known as trap-neuter-return.
We also provide low-cost spay/neuter services for pet cats through partnerships with the Oregon Spay/Neuter Fund and Spay & Save program. Our pet cat program began in April 2016.


FCCO is a spay/neuter program for cats. Our services are no-cost for feral, stray, and barn cats (donations requested) and low-cost for pet cats, including vaccines. We serve Oregon and SW Washington.
FCCO is a spay/neuter clinic for cats and does not offer full-range veterinary services.
Despite our low cost, we provide safe, high-quality care, complete with pain medication. All surgeries are performed by licensed veterinarians who practice high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter.

FERAL & STRAY CATS:
Trap-Neuter-Return
These services are targeted for feral cats who have people, known as caregivers, feeding them. The caregivers trap the cats, bring them to a clinic, and return the cats to where they are being fed. These services are provided for a suggested donation of $40 per cat.
Feral and stray cat services include the spay/neuter surgery, FVRCP (distemper) and rabies vaccines; treatment for fleas, ear mites, and other minor medical conditions; and has his or her right ear tipped for future identification. Cats that appear to be suffering, as determined by a veterinarian, are tested for feline leukemia (FeLV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV); all positives will be euthanized. Click here for feral or stray cat info.

LOW-COST SERVICES FOR PET CATS
SPAY/NEUTER SERVICES
FCCO offers low-cost services for all pet cats, including for people qualified through the Spay & Save program and those presenting the Oregon Spay/Neuter Fund coupon. The cost per cat ranges from $15 - $60.
Pet cat spay/neuter services include: Spay or neuter surgery, pre-anesthetic exam, anesthesia, and tattoo (near incision to indicate cat has been spayed).
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
For an additional cost, vaccinations and other treatments may be provided if requested when scheduling. Additional services are only provided with a spay/neuter surgery. Click here for more pet cat info.

Costs for Services: http://www.feralcats.com/prices

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What we'll do

Members of the St. Joseph High School cross-country team in California invited more than a dozen shelter dogs to accompany them on their morning run this week. I am not sure who was more excited and having the most fun ... the dogs or the kids," coach Luis Escobar said. "Either way, it was a great time and I am sure we will do it again sometime soon."

Details HIGH SCHOOL CROSS-COUNTRY TEAM TAKES LONELY SHELTER DOGS ON THEIR MORNING RUNS
Hopefully this becomes a regular thing, and that it inspires other schools to try it out, too!

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What we'll do

Help create a center that can serve as a shelter, meeting space, and a base for a series of activities and projects. Members of the Association (all of whom are homeless) design their own hygiene projects, food collection and cooking programs, and other basic service activities.

Details Additionally, they participate in a series of counseling programs with the aim of reconstructing their life histories and "rescuing" their humanity. One such activity involves writing letters to their family members.
Walter has mobilized a team of wealthy housewives to write the letters as Association members dictate them, thus providing both a therapeutic counseling session for the homeless individuals, and an eye-opening experience that allows people removed from the problem to understand it better and begin to see street people as human beings with complicated life histories.
In addition to providing their own basic services, the Association gives homeless people a mailing address and a closet to store their belongings; promotes collective cultural events, sports, and other leisure activities; and provides a space for them to discuss their experiences with each other. Existing members serve as outreach workers to draw other homeless adults into the program. Perhaps most importantly, the Association gives street adults a sense that they belong to something, a novel feeling given their extreme state of abandonment and social disassociation.
Walter is also forming a cooperative employment agency of street adults. Many such employment agencies exist and recruit homeless people for day labor, often under exploitative conditions. By creating their own agency, members not only will be involved in a productive activity and generate their own income, but also they will be in control of setting their own working conditions and rights.


Establish partnerships with professionals who can lend assistance
Although part of –, this seems to be a different idea and could be established as a different Project.
Walter recognizes that if he invests all of his efforts in working directly with street people, he will never catch up. The numbers of homeless people are increasing too rapidly, and the amount of time it takes to achieve full social integration and independence of single homeless person is immense. With this in mind, he has made the strategic decision to work increasingly with various sectors of society, to sensitize them to the problem and identify appropriate ways they can participate in the solution.
Walter has established a diverse array of partnerships with professionals who can lend various types of assistance. For instance, he is working with medical professionals and psychologists to set up unique drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs within the Association. He is channeling the efforts of other professionals into various job training activities, technical assistance, management consulting for the cooperative, and one-on-one counseling.
Walter is also creating spaces for discussion and debate regarding homelessness. He has established a series of fora in universities (targeted especially to social work students) and businesses, through which he challenges people to diagnose Brazil's homelessness problem in more complex ways, and to identify where they can best contribute to the solution. He seeks to institutionalize these events as regularly scheduled activities and to integrate them into existing university course curricula.
Walter sees the Association as a demonstration site that will serve as a model for homelessness programs in other cities. Once consolidated, he will actively spread his approach throughout Brazil.

Walter Varanda seeks to simultaneously rescue the individual humanity and dignity of existing street adults and transform the way society views and treats the problem of homelessness. To do so, he has developed a three-pronged approach. First, he is working directly with the adult street population, empowering them to organize and provide basic services for themselves. He has established an association run for and by street people, which addresses their basic needs and helps them to reintegrate into society. By identifying their most pressing needs and collectively designing appropriate solutions to their own problems, this association of street people breaks the pattern of assistance still prevalent among Brazilian churches, nongovernmental organizations, and government programs.
Second, Walter is working with existing social service organizations and other professionals who want to help. He is changing the dominant model of paternalistic service provision among organizations that currently work with street people. He is helping them transform their methodology from one that encourages passivity and dependence to one that allows street people to take control of their own lives. Walter is also reaching out to various sectors–upper-class, middle-class, business people, professionals, housewives, and others–to help them understand the complex problem of homelessness and involve them in constructive opportunities through which they can contribute to the solution.

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What we'll do

Fight social exclusion by building a solidarity network between small business owners, neighbors and homeless people that recreates social ties at a micro level. Small local business owners (restaurants, hairdressers, opticians, etc.) who are able to easily provide during the day simple services that improve living conditions of homeless people, such as access to restrooms, a phone call or a glass of water. All neighbors of a district - whereas they are homeless or not - contribute to reinforce social ties by exchanging simple services that change lives.

Details Thanks to easy-to-understand pictograms, which allow to overcome language barriers, small business owners indicate on their shop window what kind of services they can offer, and at what time. Enabling the business owners to customize services and time is key to engage them and ensure homeless people are effectively welcome. Such a system helps every business owner to easily engage in the fight against social inclusion; it also reverses a well-anchored typical tendency in which the homeless are not the ones going towards the “mainstream society” out of fear of being rejected.
In addition, Louis-Xavier works hand in hand with social work organizations, such as local unities of the Red Cross, Les Restos du Coeur or Emmaüs, and other social structures to reach the homeless with information about Le Carillon, how it works and the location of small businesses that are part of the network.

1 Start in your own neighborhood.
2 Create a label to identify the small businesses willing to open their doors to offer what they can to the homeless.
3 Build around these small local business owners a wider community involving local residents to help with the management and development of this inclusive network.
The network’s management includes the organization of monthly events where residents and homeless people meet and spend time together in one of the labeled local shop without making any distinction between “helpers” and “helped people”.
Local residents have different opportunities to engage: they can either volunteer to locally operate the follow-up of the different labeled small businesses and organize events, or take up “consumer challenges” by consuming in the labeled small local businesses to obtain consumer coupons they can offer to the homeless people they meet.

In addition, Louis-Xavier made sure to offer the homeless the opportunity to take up on an active role to maintain and develop the community. As “neighborhood ambassadors”, they can be involved in communication towards other homeless people or endorse the role of mystery customers to test the recently labeled small business owners and make sure they are not interested in the label only to spin a good line with usual customers; they can also be active contributors of a new type of local events gathering the local community, such as soup kitchens in which they are the ones serving food to their neighbors. More importantly, Louis-Xavier encourages the homeless to take responsibilities along with other citizens in the local steering committees that pilot the network’s units (follow-up, organization of monthly events, etc.).

By embedding the social inclusion matter in the citizen’s everyday life, and giving the opportunity to the homeless to be an active contributor in the community, Le Carillon’s model provokes a significant mindset shift both in the citizens’ thinking about their role of changemakers, as well as in the way homeless people see themselves.

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