Updates from Looking Glass
The 3rd annual Socktoberfest sock drive was once again a tremendous success, generating thousands of pairs of new and gently used socks for homeless youth at New Roads. Donation locations around Lane County included Bi-Mart, Macy’s at Valley River Center, Windermere Real Estate offices, Columbia Bank branches, and PeaceHealth.
This past May and June, Girl Scout Troop #24761 hosted a donation drive to collect toiletry items for Homeless Youth.
Their leader, Amy Mahady reached out to Looking Glass to learn more about the services offered so that the girls’ could learn more about how homelessness impacts youth in our community.
Looking Glass Development Coordinator, Amanda Zacharda, joined on a Zoom call during one of their meetings and was able to educate the Troop about all of the services provided at Looking Glass, especially the Homeless Youth Services.
The girls were able to come up with over 30 bags of toiletry items to donate, along with $350+ donations from multiple businesses in our community.
This past month, we asked our community to help accrue more yarn for the Pathways Girl Program, who have been crocheting as a form of therapy. We are so thrilled that many of our donors and local community members came together to help us obtain over 10+ boxes and bags full of yarn. This will allow the girls to continue to master their crochet techniques as well as helping them with their recovery during their stay at the Pathways Program.
Lane Transit District’s Transportation Options Marketing Specialist Julia Woolley helped coordinate a week long series of free bike tune ups provided to Looking Glass staff members as a way to give back to social service workers affected by the pandemic.
In October the local bike donation nonprofit Free Bikes 4 Kidz delivered 20 bikes to Looking Glass for various program use and direct youth client access. The bikes were delivered to Looking Glass residential programs as well as Riverfront’s Independent Living and Job Training Program clients and also the Looking Glass New Roads homeless youth program.
On a chilly fall Eugene day in early October, New Roads Runaway & Homeless Youth Services Manager James Ewell posed for a photo opp taken by a Register-Guard reporter showing a sad and mostly empty bin of socks at the New Roads clothing closet which showed the current supply of socks offered to youth being at about 10 or so pairs. By the end of “Socktoberfest” the first ever month-long coordinated sock donation drive for Looking Glass, the challenge became finding storage for all the newly received socks - more than 7,000 pairs of socks were donated and they’re still coming in.
A group of supporters, staff and board members gathered at Hop Valley in Eugene on Tuesday to thank Amy and Alex Haugland and recognize the impact of their help facilitating a $50,000 donation from Alex’s father’s Oregon Community Foundation fund. The Haugland’s offered these funds from the Richard P. Haugland Fund as a way to challenge other local donors to step up and try and raise $100,000 in total. Over the course of about 8 weeks, Looking Glass received donations large and small from roughly 85 individual donors and the full match was achieved!
The Richard P. Haugland Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation has offered Looking Glass an extremely generous matching donation offer - all donations made to Looking Glass from now through June 25, 2019 will be match 1-to-1 by the Haugland Fund - up to $50,000! Any new donors or returning donors (those who have not donated for 12 months or more) will generate a 2-to-1 match from this fund.
Looking Glass Community Services was selected for inclusion in Umpqua Bank’s new Power Partner Program which was designed to establish strategic partnerships with strong nonprofits in key markets throughout the bank’s footprint in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Nevada. In addition to the $12,500 check donated by Umpqua, Looking Glass has the opportunity to receive high-level engagement opportunities with Umpqua Bank associate leaders.
