Friday, April 24, 2009

Food Front

Yellow Brick Road has once again been selected for participation in Food Front's generous Bean Bag program! Food Front is one of Portland's longest-running cooperatively owned grocery stores and their Bean Bag program allows customers to donate 5 cents to various local non-profit organizations every time they shop with their own bags. Next time you shop at Food Front, we hope you'll bring your own recycled shopping bag and consider donating 5 cents to Yellow Brick Road. Those nickels really add up and make a difference!
Food Front Cooperative Grocery
2375 NW Thurman Street
Portland, Oregon
(503) 222-5658

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Yellow Brick Road & Reed College: Reaching Out

One of the great characteristics of Yellow Brick Road is our ability to go into the community and educate potential allies, stakeholders, and concerned citizens on issues related to youth homelessness. This form of outreach is every bit as critical as the kind we provide on the streets directly to the most vulnerable youth. Just in the past 6 months Yellow Brick Road has provided free trainings and presentations to Milwaukee Lutheran Church, Riverdale High School, In Other Words Books, Palisades Elementary School, St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, and Reed College. Through our rigorous engagement with the community Yellow Brick Road has fostered a particularly rewarding relationship with Reed College that has culminated in our recent partnership as a Federal Work Study (FWS) site.

The Reed FWS is an off-campus internship opportunity that allows students on financial aid to earn their required work study by volunteering with non-profit organizations, schools, and government agencies. In August 2007 Yellow Brick Road became a partner organization, actively recruiting Reed students to join our nightly YBR teams in downtown Portland. Since that time YBR has trained nearly 20 Reed students, approximately 5 students per semester, to conduct outreach among homeless young people who are quite often their own age. Currently, Reed students account for nearly half of our nightly volunteer outreach volunteers! At least two of these students have been so impassioned by their work with YBR that they’ve redirected their course of study toward community services. Two other Reed volunteers have since been hired on as substitute workers in the Janus Youth shelter programs, Streetlight and Porchlight. Reed’s Students for Education, Empowerment and Direct Service (S.E.E.D.S.) program has been instrumental in this linkage and coordinate closely with YBR to recruit and support their students in our often difficult but always rewarding work on the streets of downtown Portland.

Beyond financial aid, many of the Reed students who spend time with YBR have stated that their service has empowered them to become meaningfully engaged with the local community and become more broadly educated about "real world" issues. They have also stated that their service with YBR has proven to be a strong community-building influence on campus that also allows them the opportunity to get out of the Reed “bubble” to enjoy positive, educational, and healthy recreation. YBR wishes to thank all of the Reed students who have joined the fold since 2007 and we look forward to a lasting relationship with Reed College in the future. For more information about Reed College’s S.E.E.D.S program visit them online here!

Dennis Lundberg
Associate Director/Willamette Bridge Programs

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

2009 Street Count results have been released

The results of this year's Street Count survey have been released today by the Portland Bureau of Housing & Community Development. To read the extensive report visit Portland Online. Thank you to everyone who participated in this important survey!

Monday, April 13, 2009

meet the press

Meet Yellow Brick Road supervisor Dennis Lundberg and some of our allies in the struggle against homelessness and poverty at Ultimate Northwest magazine's recent feature on people making a difference in our community!

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

To Ride, Shoot Straight, & Meet 'Em Where They're At!


2009 marks the 25th Anniversary of Yellow Brick Road! As we gear up to celebrate this milestone it seems like a great opportunity to highlight one of the many folks who make Janus Youth’s Street Outreach Programs so remarkable. Neal Sand is a professional Outreach Specialist with Janus Youth's Outreach & Engagement. "O&E", as it is popularly known on the streets, was conceived nearly 5 years ago as a critical offshoot of our volunteer-based outreach program with the mission of delivering intensive mobile services directly to the young people who need them most but are often the least likely to seek them out on their own. Since he joined the O&E team in 2006 Neal has packed his bag every week and headed out to the streets, bridges, wooded camps, squats, and pretty much anywhere off the beaten path where he might find Portland’s most vulnerable young people. He excels at meeting the “hardest to reach” youth where they’re at and he builds meaningful relationships that make a lasting difference.

Neal’s history with Janus Youth Programs goes back to 1998 when he began as a volunteer with Yellow Brick Road. The amazing part of his story is that Neal stepped into YBR to fill his sister’s shift on the team. His sister had in fact stepped into YBR to fill her then-boyfriend now-husband’s shift. You can safely say that serving the community is a family tradition. Neal far exceeded his minimum 6 month volunteer commitment, remaining on the YBR team for no less than 4 years before he applied and was hired as a substitute line staff for the Willamette Bridge Programs. He was soon hired on full-time, serving the front lines at Bridgehouse, Streetlight, and Porchlight Crisis Shelter before assuming his role as an Intake Worker for both the Access Center and the Road Warrior late night drop-in program. Over the years Neal has honed his skills with young people and left a wake of hilarious epic-length monologues in our staff log books.

Neal is a Journalism major with a gift for wry wit. That’s a nice way of saying he can laugh even in the shadow of life’s darkest ironies. It’s a skill that serves him well in our work downtown where we’ve needed both hands to count the folks we've lost on the streets in the past 8 months. Neal’s passion for laughter and language is a gift he has shared with youth in the form of creative writing and self-expression workshops. I’ve watched him make words come alive for young people with dub reggae and colorful beatnik poetry. I vividly recall the proud smile of a particularly hardened ex-convict after he finished reading his journal aloud to a group of equally hardened peers and beamed, “I never knew poetry doesn’t have to rhyme!” Neal believes in young people so unrelentingly that, eventually, they tend to believe in themselves.

Anyone who spends time with Neal soon comes to appreciate his love for cinema, which is a wonderful coincidence considering he got his start at a program that takes its name from a 1939 musical. Neal doesn’t just casually enjoy movies. He is a walking encyclopedia of obscure film trivia and his enthusiasm is downright contagious. One of his favorites is Django, an old “spaghetti western” that tells the tale of a brooding anti-hero who drags a coffin filled with ammunition through muddy frontier camps meting out justice and classic one-liners. I like to imagine Neal riding into the sunset on outreach like a badlands bandito. Of course, instead of a coffin full of guns he totes an outreach bag full of socks, cough drops, triple antibiotic, and resource guides. Like Django, he chooses his words carefully and delivers one-liners with a twinkle in his eye. Neal is a soft-spoken hero on the streets of Portland and he is one of the dedicated youth advocates who have made the Janus Youth Outreach Programs the acclaimed models they are today. I’m glad to know him. So are the youth.
~Dennis Lundberg


“Neal is an excellent outreach worker. He is very observant out in the field and has the ability to explain what steps people can take to improve their situation without being judgmental." ~Devin Dinihanian (RTA)

“Neal is kind, compassionate, and reliable…but those words always sound so cliché. I guess what I’m saying is I appreciate somebody who can handle any crisis but can also talk about Motorhead and bad zombie movies.” ~Jasmine Pettet (Outside In)

“Neal is so cool, he doesn’t even realize how cool he is!” ~ “Leyla” (Youth)