 Back to School at Good Neighbor
Most students take their school supplies for granted. They never think that there are children who don't have stacks of loose-leaf paper and notebooks, fistfuls of pencils, enough pink erasers for their entire grade, and a shiny, new backpack. But the children at Good Neighbor Center don't. These are children who do not always know where their next meal is coming from; school supplies are low on the shopping list. We do our best to remedy that by collecting school supplies all summer and filling a brand new backpack with everything they could need during the school year. With the help from many generous donors, the GNC celebrated our annual Back to School Party at Christ the King Church in Tigard. Thank you to all who helped in making this party a success and giving each child a new backpack filled with school supplies to begin the new year.
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 New Eagle Scout Project at GNC
Eagle Scout Jayden Homer completed a much needed project for Good Neighbor Center in an impressive two days. For 13 years we have been in need of an organized medical room. The med room is where we store all of our medications like aspirin, as well as hygiene items like shampoo and soap. For the first time since the shelter opened its doors, the med room is completely organized. This project has allowed us to be more efficient and has more than doubled our storage space. We extend a huge Thank You to Jayden for choosing Good Neighbor Center for his Eagle Scout project; you have helped the shelter immensely!
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 Adopt-a-Room!
There are nine rooms at the Good Neighbor Center shelter, and they are occupied almost 360 days a year. It doesn't take very long for them to need sprucing up: a fresh coat of paint, small repairs to the Sheetrock, fresh bedding. It does take a long time, however, to find volunteers to take on the task of freshening up the rooms. Or adopting the rooms, as we say. This August, we were blessed to have two of our rooms adopted. One of our rooms was adopted by the Journey Church and another was adopted by Unitus Community Credit Union. These adoptions included a fresh coat of paint, new bedclothes, new drawer pulls, and new window dressings. While these are things that we take for granted, they provide homeless families with a feeling of safety and security and we are so thankful to Journey Church and Unitus for helping us improve the lives of homeless families in Washington County.
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Director's Note
Last night we celebrated the return of the school year with our housing families at Christ the King Lutheran Church. For the staff it was a chance to take a deep breath and relax. It took some doing to assemble 60 backpacks of school supplies and prepare for this pizza feed. We just finished 10 weeks of one of the largest Summer School programs in our history. The start of school means the start of Homework Club four afternoons a week. For our Children's Program, the beat goes on.
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