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Oregon Fast Fact: In Oregon it is illegal to use canned corn as fish bait
Year 20 • Issue 9 4 November 2013 1. From Sea to Shining Sea: Subsidy Millionaires Are Everywhere 2. What Sandy Taught Us: Quick Response Reports Look at Impacts and Recovery 3. WealthWorks 4. Agora Investment Platform 5. SNAP Benefits Reduced November 1, 2013 6. America’s Mood Map: An Interactive Guide to the United States of Attitude 7. Thirst for Cider Fuels 2 Towns’ Growth 8. An Evening of Sharing Skills and Resources 9. Italian Magazine Says U.S. Spies Listened to Pope, Vatican Says Unaware 10. Cover Oregon Hand Sorts 7,300 Paper Applications So Far 11. Travel Oregon 101 Training 12. Funding Opportunities 1. Sea to Shining Sea: Subsidy Millionaires Are Everywhere “Subsidy millionaires” are not your typical family farmers. They are individuals who each year collect more than $1 million each in crop insurance subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They own big agriculture operations – really big ones. And even though big agribusinesses are raking in record profits, the government ponies up lots of dough to cover a large share – 100 percent in some cases – of their insurance premiums. In 2011, the only year for which EWG was given more detailed data, there were 26 subsidy millionaires across the country. Congress doesn’t allow USDA to release their names, but the agency did identify what counties their crops were in. And they were all over the map, operating on 1.1 million acres of cropland in 174 counties. One grower is planting in as many as eight states! (See map below.) For every one of their fields, these subsidy millionaires get huge giveaways from the government. So much so that in six counties a single farmer banked more in premium subsidies than all of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in that county – combined – got to help buy food. To access the full story, click here. 2. What Sandy Taught Us: Quick Response Reports Look at Impacts and Recovery It’s been a year since Hurricane Sandy barreled up the East Coast and from emergency agencies to nonprofit groups to media outlets, there’s been a lot of looking back at what we’ve learned and what progress has been made. Now it’s our turn. Shortly into the recovery phase, the Natural Hazard Center’s Quick Response Grant Program issued a special call for research related to Page 1 of 8
Hurricane Sandy. The program provides small grants to fund travel to disaster-affected areas to capture perishable data. We received more than 35 proposals to study Sandy. The following reports were funded:
Influence of Household Recovery Capacity and Urgency on Post-Disaster Relocation: A Case Study of The Rockaways, New York After Hurricane Sandy --Divya Chandrasekhar and Donovan Finn
Impacts of Superstorm Sandy on New York City’s New Waterfront Parks --Rutherford Platt
Resilience and Post-Disaster Relocation: A Study of New York's Home Buyout Plan in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy --Sherri Brokopp Binder
Partnership Behavior in Disaster Relief Operations: A Case Study of the Response to Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey --John Coles and Jun Zhuang
Querying Facility Management Teams: Document Preservation and Debris Removal for Cultural Collections --Paulette Hebert and Lori Schram
The Effects of Hurricane Sandy on the Homeless in New Jersey --Marc Settembrino
Assessing the Impacts of Hurricane Sandy on the Port of New York and New Jersey's Maritime Responders and Response Infrastructure --Tiffany Smythe
3. WealthWorks WealthWorks is a 21st-century approach to local and regional economic development that belongs in every community and economic development toolkit. WealthWorks brings together and connects a community’s assets to meet market demand in ways that build livelihoods that last. WealthWorks aims to advance a region’s overall prosperity and self-reliance, strengthen existing and emerging sectors, and increase jobs and incomes for lower-income residents and firms — all at the same time. It can work for people, firms and places of all sizes, shapes and success levels. Why WealthWorks? WealthWorks offers a systematic approach that identifies enterprising opportunities in a region and engages a wide range of partners in turning those opportunities into results that both build and capture wealth. It can complement or incorporate traditional economic development methods, but intentionally focuses on creating more value that becomes rooted in local people, places and firms. The WealthWorks approach is designed to produce and sustain these results: Build a more self-reliant and robust area economy. Bring underutilized community assets — people, place, property and know-how — into fuller participation and production. Page 2 of 8
Create wealth that sticks — because it is locally owned, controlled and reinvested. Increase upward mobility overall and advance the livelihoods of lower-income people, firms and places. Strengthen industry sectors that fuel the economy. Forge valued partnerships that can ably and flexibly connect again and again to power increasingly resilient regions For more information about WealthWorks, click here. 4. Agora Investment Platform Maggie Hanna, Investment Platform Coordinator, has been focusing on community outreach and eduction about the Agora Investment Platform. The recent release of the "Why Agora" video has helped explain and support the matching of community needs and projects to potential financing sources. Maggie has been busy assisting communities and individual project upload their projects into the platform. The Agora Investment Platform is the result of a productive partnership between the Mid-Columbia Economic Development District, various foundations, state governments and the private sector. Agora provides an online marketplace to advance community and economic development priorities by matching community needs with relevant funding sources across public, private, and philanthropic sectors. The Platform offers greater visibility to community needs and projects as well as the opportunity to connect with unique project funding sources. For more information about Agora, visit www.agora-platform.com or contact Maggie Hanna at maggie@mcedd.org. 5. SNAP Benefits Reduced November 1, 2013 All households will see SNAP benefits reduced as ARRA boost expires. Download informational flier Why are SNAP (food stamp) benefits going down? On November 1, all Oregonians receiving SNAP (formerly know as food stamps) will receive a reduction in their benefits. This reduction is due to the expiration of additional SNAP funding provided in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. In Oregon this means that more than 800,000 families with children, seniors, and workers will have fewer resources each month to spend on food in our local economies. Contact Nancy Weed, SNAP Outreach Manager for more information. 6. America’s Mood Map: An Interactive Guide to the United States of Attitude West Virginia is the most neurotic state, Utah is the most agreeable and the folks of Wisconsin are the country's most extroverted, a new study says. Take TIME's test to find out which state most suits you. For a country that features the word United so prominently in its name, the U.S. is a pretty fractious place. We splinter along fault lines of income, education, religion, race, hyphenated origin, age and politics. Then too there’s temperament. We’re coarse or courtly, traditionalist or rebel, amped up or laid-back. And it’s no secret that a lot of that seems to be determined by — or at least associated with — where we live.
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Now a multinational team of researchers led by psychologist and American expat Jason Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. has sought to draw the regional lines more clearly, literally mapping the American mood, with state-by-state ratings of personality and temperament. To access the full story and interactive mood map, click here. 7. Thirst for Cider Fuels 2 Towns’ Growth Don’t look now, but 2 Towns Ciderhouse is growing again. It’s been a little more than a year since Corvallis’ homegrown hard cider producer graduated from its 1,000-square-foot startup space in the back of the Eastgate Business Center to a 10,000-square-foot showplace at the front of the industrial park. Turns out the region’s thirst for 2 Towns’ product is even bigger than that. “We added a tasting room and quintupled our production capacity, as well as bringing on 13 new full-time employees in the last 12 months,” said co-founder Aaron Sarnoff-Wood, the company’s marketing manager. “Now we’ve exceeded our capacity again.” In an attempt to keep pace with that soaring demand, 2 Towns plans to invest a cool $1 million in a second production facility. The new cidery will occupy 15,000 square feet of renovated space at 5123 S.W. Hout St., in the Corvallis Airport Industrial Park. The plan is to move production of the company’s flagship cider lines to the new facility while retaining the tasting room at the current location, which also will be used to expand production of seasonal and barrel-aged ciders, special releases and pommeau, a brandy-infused creation that cofounder and head cidermaker Dave Takush likens to apple port. To access the full story, click here. 8.
An Evening of Sharing Skills and Resources Come connect with community at our next Sharing Ideas event, Sharing Skills and Resources. This free event, sponsored by Community Legacy Program of Our United Villages, is on Thursday, November 21st, from 6pm to 8pm at Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, 4815 NE 7th Avenue, Portland, OR 97211. Sharing Ideas events illuminate positive, grassroots efforts of neighbors, volunteer groups and organizations throughout Portland that foster shared understanding. Presenters will provide inspirational insights revealing how they moved their project ideas into action, where they are today and their future hopes and dreams. This Sharing Ideas presentation features two local projects that bring people together from a variety of backgrounds to share skills and resources: · Repair PDX is a volunteer led group that organizes repair cafés all over Portland, inviting participants to bring their broken items to get fixed for free. · Outgrowing Hunger is a nonprofit founded in 2011 to create participatory opportunities for improving the accessibility and affordability of fresh produce. Please RSVP online or by phone at 503.546.7499. The event is free and open to the community! Refreshments will be provided. Childcare (9 and under), transportation, and interpretation are provided upon request, with 48 hours advanced notice. For more information about Sharing Ideas events and community-building resources, please refer to our website. Page 4 of 8
The Community Legacy Program of Our United Villages is a free resource for sharing community-building stories, strategies and ideas. 9. Italian Magazine Says U.S. Spies Listened to Pope, Vatican Says Unaware An Italian magazine said on Wednesday that a United States spy agency had eavesdropped on Vatican phone calls, possibly including when former Pope Benedict's successor was under discussion, but the Holy See said it had no knowledge of any such activity. Panorama magazine said that among 46 million phone calls followed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in Italy from December 10, 2012, to January 8, 2013, were conversations in and out of the Vatican. In a press release before full publication on Thursday, Panorama said the "NSA had tapped the pope". It cited no source for its information. Asked to comment on the report, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said: "We are not aware of anything on this issue and in any case we have no concerns about it." Media reports based on revelations from Edward Snowden, the fugitive former U.S. intelligence operative granted asylum in Russia, have said the NSA had spied on French citizens over the same period in December in January To access the full story, click here. 10. Cover Oregon Hand Sorts 7,300 Paper Applications So Far As the federal government consumes humble pie over failures in the health insurance exchanges, Oregon’s exchange is also struggling. Cover Oregon has yet to enroll one single person and it’s been reduced to combing through paper applications to figure out eligibility. When Cover Oregon opened October 1, executive director Rocky King was excited. He’d been preparing for years, “Day one, we are accepting applications,” he said. “And staff at the Oregon Health Authority and Cover Oregon are ready to process those applications.” To access the full story, click here. 11. Travel Oregon 101 Training You may be interested in some upcoming training sessions provided by Travel Oregon and targeted toward visitor-related organizations and businesses to help them take advantage of the many opportunities offered by Travel Oregon. Find out how to partner with other industry members around the state to maximize your exposure to visitors. Every attendee receives a resource packet brimming with information and contacts for future reference. WHO SHOULD ATTEND TRAVEL OREGON 101? * Convention & visitor bureaus and chambers of commerce staff (DMOs) * Owners/managers of lodging properties, restaurants and visitor attractions * Organizations producing events that attract visitors Page 5 of 8
* Economic development staff of government agencies at all levels * Tour operators, visitor services of all types * Staff of heritage organizations, museums and interpretive centers WHAT WILL YOU LEARN? The seminar will tell you: * How to get looped into the tourism industry’s communication system (at the local, regional, statewide, national and international levels) * How to let Travel Oregon know you’re out there and ready for visitors * Programs and services Travel Oregon offers that help businesses, organizations and communities draw more visitors 2013 SCHEDULE OF UPCOMING SESSIONS * November 18, 2013 – Webinar Only – 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. – Register now <http://www.cvent.com/d/t4q7gd> * December 3, 2013 – Seaside, OR – 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. - Register now <http://www.cvent.com/d/x4q7gr> If you would like to be informed as new details are available, please send your request to Patti@TravelOregon.com. 12. Funding Opportunities Roots of Success Invites Applications for Green Jobs Literacy Training <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb13> - The program helps nonprofits teach the Roots of Success curriculum to individuals facing multiple barriers to employment.... Deadline: November 15, 2013 Interactive Intelligence Foundation Announces Request for Proposals for Programs Geared Toward At-Risk Youth <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb12> The foundation will award grants to nonprofits organizations for programs designed to foster life improvements for at-risk youth up to the age of 18.... Deadline: November 15, 2013 ArtPlace Invites Letters of Inquiry for Creative Placemaking Projects <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb18> Grants will be awarded to projects that involve arts organizations, artists and designers, working in partnership with local and national partners, that have a transformative impact on community vibrancy.... Deadline: December 13, 2013 (Letters of Inquiry) Youth Service America and Sodexo Foundation Offer Grants for Youth-Led Hunger Service Projects <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb19> Grants of up to $500 will be awarded for youth-led projects that bring together young people, families, and other community members to address childhood hunger.... Deadline: January 31, 2014 Lawrence Foundation Accepting Proposals for Environmental, Education, Human Services Projects <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb22> - The foundation awards grants to U.S.-based nonprofits working in the areas of the environment, education, human services, and disaster relief.... Deadline: April 30, 2014
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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Invites Applications for New Careers in Nursing Program <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb24> Funds supporting up to four hundred scholarships of $10,000 each for students from underrepresented groups in nursing or who are economically disadvantaged will be awarded to selected schools of nursing in the United States.... Deadline: January 9, 2014 Independent Sector Accepting Nominations for Gardner Leadership Award <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSatCkB8ixfdB82DW1AACSSkXv/rfpb11> - The annual award is presented to an American whose leadership in or related to the nonprofit community at the international, national, or regional level has been transformative.... Deadline: January 31, 2014 Middle School Students Invited to Submit Entries for Christopher Columbus Awards <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSRfocB8ixfdB81dhzAACSSkAN/rfpb25> The program challenges students in grades six to eight, working in teams of three to four with an adult coach, to identify a problem in their community and apply the scientific method to create a solution to that problem.... Deadline: February 3, 2014 American Association of School Librarians Invites Applications for Innovative Reading Project s<http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSTy$VB8ixfdB81mnfAACSSkfw/rfpb23> One grant in the amount of $2,500 will be awarded to support the planning and implementation of an innovative program for children that motivates and encourages reading, especially among struggling readers.... Deadline: February 1, 2014 American Electric Power Applications for 2014-2015 PreK-12 Classroom Projects <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSTy$VB8ixfdB81mnfAACSSkfw/rfpb24> - Grants of up to $500 will be awarded for classroom projects that have an academic focus and promote academic achievement.... Deadline: February 28, 2014 Terra Foundation Offers Funding for American Art Exhibitions <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSTy$VB8ixfdB81mnfAACSSkfw/rfpb20> - The foundation supports exhibitions that enlarge the understanding and appreciation of historical American art made between 1500 and 1980.... Deadline: March 3, 2014 (Letters of Inquiry) EZRA JACK KEATS FOUNDATION is accepting minigrant applications from public schools and libraries in the United States and its territories. Minigrants of up to $500 to support projects that foster creative expression, working together and interaction with a diverse community. Deadline: 3/15/2014. Click here <http://rurallisc.cmail2.com/t/r-l-nlukukk-jrdkjkiilu-yk/> to visit the foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website. GreenPal Lawncare Accepting Applications for Annual Business Scholarship <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSWGkLB8ixfdB81xGqAACSSkH4/rfpb19> - Scholarship funds of $2,000 will be awarded to a motivated, driven student who owns and operates his/her own small business, or has put together a business plan to start a business while in college....Deadline: February 28, 2014 Chamber Music America Invites Applications for Classical Commissioning Program <http://e.foundationcenter.org/a/hBSRfocB8ixfdB81dhzAACSSkAN/rfpb18> - The program supports works scored for two to ten musicians performing one per part and composed in any of the musical styles associated with contemporary classical music....Deadline: April 4, 2014
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Service Coordinators in Multifamily Housing <http://www.raconline.org/funding/540/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign= update102413> - Application deadline: Nov 16, 2013. Funding to enable independent living for people with disabilities and the elderly. Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Grants for Native Americans and Native American Caregiver Support Program <http://www.raconline.org/funding/1724/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =update102413> - Application deadline: Nov 21, 2013 Funding for programs to increase home- and community-based services to older Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Source: Administration on Aging Annie's School Garden Grants <http://www.raconline.org/funding/3026/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =update102413> - Application deadline: Dec 1, 2013. Offers grants to develop school garden projects. Source: Annie's Homegrown Answer Plot Community Garden Program <http://www.raconline.org/funding/3329/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =update102413> - Application deadline: Dec 1, 2013 Awards funding to FFA chapters to plant, grow, and harvest fresh produce, which will then be given to rural food pantries. Source: Land O'Lakes Foundation Transitional Living Program and Maternity Group Homes <http://www.raconline.org/funding/3328/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =update102413> -Application deadline: Jan 15, 2014. Grants to provide services through transitional living programs or maternity group homes for runaway and homeless youth, including youth from rural areas. Source: Administration for Children and Families Healthy Environments <http://www.raconline.org/funding/2220/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =update102413> - Application deadline: Applications accepted on an ongoing basis. Funding to improve the health and well being of vulnerable children from low-income families by making the places they live, learn, and play safe and supportive of overall good health. Source: Kresge Foundation Stand Down Grants <http://www.raconline.org/funding/1236/?utm_source=hs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =update102413> - Application deadline: Applications accepted on an ongoing basis. Provides funding for events that offer homeless veteran populations a variety of social services. Source: Veterans Employment and Training Service
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