Portland program could help fight poverty here

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The Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) decided 10 years ago to focus its attention on poverty reduction across its eight-state region. In 2004, the foundation partnered with Portland, Oregon’s housing and community development bureau, where Howard Cutler designed an innovative poverty reduction program. Cutler spoke about his program to invited local organizations January 21-22 at NWAF’s St. Paul headquarters. “The number-one problem in Portland for 20 years was blighted areas,” he explained of the Economic Opportunity Initiative, which currently funds 27 community-based workforce programs, along with seven micro-enterprise projects. Continue Reading

Still praying, still protesting

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Char Madigan will be praying for peace during the RNC this year, a continuation of a career of prayer and protest that goes back more than thirty years. On July 4, 1976 in the Phillips neighborhood, near Portland and Franklin, Char Madigan started her peace activism. Out of her own apartment along with Rita Steinhagen and Laura Geyer, two other sisters of St. Joseph’s of Carondelet, she gave her personal phone number to the police and Chrysalis, a battered women’s shelter, to help anyone in need in her neighborhood … people on the run, new in town, etc. Hope CommunityThis brief history is taken from Hope Community’s Web site.Hope Community began as a place for people to gather in community. Continue Reading