Happy New Year Sunnyside!
The big news out of the SNA this month is the success of our annual clothing and gear drive to help our houseless neighbors in this cold and wet season. The event was held indoors this year on December 10th at SE Uplift (SEUL). Thank you to SEUL for providing a warm and inviting space for everyone, a big change from the wet, cold outdoors of past years! Also thank you to New Seasons, Grand Central Bakery and Fried Egg I’m in Love for your generous donations of food for our guests and volunteers. Thanks, too, to Crossroads Trading, Mix Tape, the Mountain Shop, and Next Adventure—all of which donated boxes of warm clothes or gift certificates. The biggest thanks of all goes out to our volunteers for taking the time during this busy holiday season to connect with neighbors living outside. Kudos to the SNACC team for putting together such a wonderful event!
The SNA board met on December 8th for our monthly board meeting. Emily stepped up to take over as the presiding officer for the next few months. She will be coordinating agendas and running our meetings through February. This new arrangement allows board members to share some of the responsibilities and decision-making power of the president, gain valuable experience and distribute some of the administrative burden. We talked about filling vacant, and soon-to-be vacant, positions on the board and committees as well as ways that the SNA can work to improve our diversity and equity lens in the work we do for the neighborhood. More on those topics to come!
Our next general meeting will be on January 12th. We will be talking about a proposed expansion to the greenways system in Sunnyside and a potential endorsement of Quiet Clean PDX’s quest to limit the use of gas-powered leaf blowers (see The Scourge of Gas-powered Leaf Blowers).
