Building Partners At Rose City Park Presbyterian

A choir and orchestra of more than 50 members whose mission is to sing the entire set of cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach over a period of 30 years. The space rented at this church is used for both rehearsals and performances. There are approximately five concerts each year, with two or three cantatas per concert. Most concerts are on Sunday afternoons at 2:00 p.m. and all concerts are held at this church. Concerts are free (free-will offering accepted) unless advertised otherwise.

Learn more here: Bach Cantata Choir

The Blosser Center was founded in 2000 to continue the educational and advocacy work of Dorothy Blosser Whitehead, M.S., a nationally recognized leader in establishing standards for reading specialists. Nearly 20% of the population has symptoms of dyslexia which include slow or inaccurate reading, poor spelling, poor writing, or mixing up similar words.  At our church, the Blosser Center runs a yearly summer camp, as well as year-long one-on-one tutoring to help youth diagnosed with dyslexia.

Learn more here: Blosser Center for Dyslexia Resources

Farmers Market Fund’s Double Up Food Bucks program provides a dollar-for-dollar match on SNAP purchases at over 100 Oregon Farmers Markets and Farm Stands. Double Up is a triple win: families bring home more fresh produce, more money goes directly to small, local producers, and local economies thrive. In collaboration with other service providers, Farmers Market Fund also provides support and training to participating farmers markets and farm stands. This includes bookkeeping support, SNAP technical assistance, anti-racism & DEI training, outreach materials, and loads of tools and templates to support their work.  Our work comes from the core belief that no person should be denied access to the foods they need to eat well.

Learn more here: Farmers Market Fund

Hollywood Farmers Market is a weekly Farmers Market that supports local, fresh, and delicious food, now open year-round. In early 1997, a group of Northeast Portland neighbors opened a farmers market in a nearby bank parking lot with 10 vendors. In 2000, they moved to NE Hancock Street between NE 44th and 45th Avenues. This location now comes alive on Saturdays throughout the year, with over 50 vendors, plus community booths, musicians, volunteers, and neighbors. In 2011, they expanded to a year-round season.

Learn more here: Hollywood Farmers Market

IATSE Local 488, Studio Mechanics of the Pacific Northwest, mission is “To improve the lives of our members working in the entertainment industry, both inside and outside the workplace, through collective bargaining, training, and education.” They represents over 700 film, television, and commercial crew members across Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Northern Idaho, where they contribute their expertise and skills to a thriving entertainment industry. Their members work in a wide range of departments, including art, construction, costume, craft services, electrical, first aid, greens, grip, hair, locations, makeup, paint & scenic, production office, props, script supervision, set dressing, set teaching, sound, special effects, and video assist. Today, IATSE Local 488 continues to be a strong advocate for its members, ensuring that industry standards for safety, fairness, and professionalism are upheld in the Pacific Northwest entertainment community. Learm ,pre here: https://www.iatse488.org/

The Milk Crate Kitchen team has a passion about reducing hunger and fighting for food security. They make sure every dollar contributed is put to the absolute best use, feeding each family for less than $5 on average. They seek out in-kind donations from local farmers, food hubs, and businesses and rescue food extras to help keep costs at a minimum. Money raised from financial donations are used for staff wages and to pay for buying quality food ingredients, kitchen rental, and packaging supplies.  To learn more, go to their website at https://www.milkcratekitchen.org/.

Peace in Schools is a small non-profit that offers transformative mindfulness education to teens. The heart of our work over the past 10 years has been Mindful Studies – a researched-backed, for-credit elective course for 10-12th graders in Portland Public High Schools. The class is fully integrated into the school day like any other subject. Today, Peace in Schools is rolling out a major initiative to expand access to Mindful Studies, training high school teachers to offer Mindful Studies as an integrated for-credit course outside of Portland.  As for the people behind Peace in Schools, we have a team of 13– some who work remotely, some in schools, and some who will be working from our new office! We are really excited about joining the RCPPC community. Please stop by and say hello!

Learn more here: Peace in Schools

PlayWrite is an organization working with under-served youth to create original plays, teaching young people to contribute to their communities while healing their own emotional experiences. In workshop, participants write a one-act play using unique, non-human characters that represent authentic emotions from their own life experiences.  The workshop culminates in a performance with professional actors. Participants, coaches, and performers alike express that putting feelings into language can be healing, restorative and nurturing.

Learn more here: PlayWrite, Inc

The Puddletown Knitters Guild is a community of knitters meeting once a month for social knitting and artist talks from local fiber artists and fiber providers. This group promotes a diverse community of knitters of all abilities, supports local fiber providers and artists from farm to knitting needles, and models respect for the local fiber community by actively valuing their time and expertise. PKG sees fiber arts as a vital and respected part of Portland art culture. They work to continue the tradition of knitting, increase awareness of knitting, and to positively impact the neighboring community as knitters.

Learn more here: Puddletown Knitters Guild

SacredFlight is a music thanatology practice which provides harp accompaniment as part of end-of-life care. They offer prescriptive music vigils with harp and voice in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, and private residences in the greater Portland and Vancouver area. Sacred Flight aims to expand and develop the field of music-thanatology (music which accompanies people at death) through community outreach and education, and the training of future music-thanatologists. They work to expand cultural perceptions so that death and dying can be seen and experienced as a meaningful transition within the circle of life. 

Learn more here: SacredFlight

Shorinji Kempo is the East Portland Branch of the Shorinji Kempo Organization, and is a cool alternative martial arts system that draws on several Japanese and Chinese martial arts traditions. While not as well known in the United States, Shorinji Kempo has more than one million students in 33 countries worldwide. They combine effective self-defense techniques with a practical philosophy based on Buddhist principles.  Some of the benefits of Shorinji Kempo include:

• self-defense
• spiritual cultivation
• improved health through physical fitness, mental and spiritual enrichment
• character building.

They are currently welcoming new students! For more information go to their website at https://portlandsk.com.