EUGENE, OREGON – With the onset of cold weather, our most vulnerable community members who are living outdoors face freezing winter conditions. White Bird Clinic is sending out a call for any and all winter gear, particularly socks, warm gloves, blankets and sleeping bags.
For those who spend most of their time outdoors, winter in Eugene can be dangerous, as wet, cold weather makes it hard to stay healthy. Your donation of winter gear makes a difference for people who don’t have a warm and dry place to live. White Bird asks you to partner with us to support under-resourced community members and strengthen our shared culture of caring for one another.
Please bring donations to our main clinic building at 341 E 12th Ave. in Eugene:
We’re happy to pick up larger donations. Please call 541-342-8255.
White Bird’s Front Room program offers a warm and dry space. We are open 7 days a week 9am-12:45pm – 1:30pm-5pm, and Weds close at 3:30pm.
and located at 341 E 12th St. in Eugene, we welcome the community to come get supplies to shield from the cold.
In 1969, a group of student activists and concerned practitioners came together to provide crisis services and free medical care for counter-culture youth in Eugene, OR. Having grown continuously since then, today White Bird Clinic has 10 programs, 220 staff members, and more than 400 volunteers each year.
To celebrate fifty years of service, White Bird is growing, demonstrating our commitment to serving low income, under-resourced community members. We’re expanding many different programs at once, so we’re turning to the community for support and partnership. Please call 541.342.8255 or visit www.whitebirdclinic.org to donate to the project of your choice.
The City of Eugene would like to invite people experiencing homelessness to participate in a park cleanup project (general landscaping), followed by showers, lunch, and on-site resources and social service providers. This event was inspired by the
listening session Mayor Vinis hosted last summer to hear from unhoused members of the community about how we can use and enjoy our public parks together. No experience necessary. Tools, gloves and instruction provided.
To RSVP or for more information, contact Regan Watjus, Policy Analyst, City Manager’s Office at 541.682.8442 or Regan.S.Watjus@ci.eugene.or.us
After two weeks of renovations, Front Rooms is re-open for business! We put a lot of TLC into our beloved old building, including a deep clean, floor renovation, wood restoration and a fresh coat of paint. All services are back open for usual hours, including mail, crisis walk-ins and homeless day-use services.
Last weekend, White Bird Clinic had the good fortune to participate in Hack for a Cause, a local technology competition to build solutions to provide transformative public benefit. Over 200 participants volunteered to put their coding and software skills to the test and 11 non-profits offered up their problems to solve. The one we selected was the community help directory. White Bird’s Performance Coordinator Alan Glick describes what we were hoping for in the following video.
YOU ARE INVITED to change the world?*Join the tech community NEXT WEEK to develop solutions to 11 local challenges including this one submitted by Alan Glick & White Bird Clinic*Are you in? Learn more here ? ? ?http://hackforacause.org#hack4cause
Posted by Technology Association of Oregon in the Southern Willamette Valley on Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Three teams of volunteers worked around the clock, exploring how our paper Help Book could become an accessible online database. Each of the solutions they presented were beyond our expectations and the community networking opportunities planted seeds for future projects with some of the other non-profit challengers.
Demo Start Screen
Joshua, sent us a comment after the event: “I want to say, after really getting to know this data, this is an amazing resource, and I am honored to be able to help make it better.”
We will continue to develop this digital Help Book website with our partners for a 2019 release. We are so thankful for the support from the Technology Association of Oregon for making this hack possible.
Until then, you can support our work by ordering the 2018 edition Help Book and joining us at the Lane County Medical Society building at 990 W. 7th Avenue to pick up your book(s) and have lunch with us on Friday, April 27 from 12:00pm to 1:30pm to celebrate 40 years of local, human service information referral and see what’s next for Lane County’s Help Book.
Our fantastic team who brought our Help Directory to new heights. Hoping to get it released to the public soon. Thank you Eugene community! #hackathon #techoregon #oregontech pic.twitter.com/neJmjyVUdQ
— White Bird Clinic (@WhiteBirdClinic) April 9, 2018
White Bird Clinic is excited to announce our challenge has been accepted for Hack for a Cause 2018! We’re looking forward to working with the Technology Association of Oregon and meeting our volunteers.
Contact us at info@whitebirdclinic.org.
We’d love to hear them. Want more information? Meet us at Tech Tuesday at the Barn Light, 3/27 from 5:30-7:30pm. Come say hi – we’ll be the ones in the White Bird shirts.
Living on the streets is even harder without a sleeping bag. Thanks to a generous donation from the Jill Heiman Vision Fund, White Bird Clinic greatly increased our supply of cold weather gear during the coldest months of 2017-2018. When the weather turns to rain and sleet, unhoused residents of Lane County come to our clinic seeking warm clothing and bedding. We used funds to bulk order some of our most requested items.
Tarps, sleeping bags, socks, gloves, and hats are vital for people living outdoors in cold weather. White Bird collects donated items every year from community partners and supporters, but these unfortunately are never quite enough to meet community need. The Jill Heiman funds enabled us to buy items efficiently, in large quantities. We purchased 480 tarps, 320 sleeping bags, 2,550 pairs of socks, 240 pairs of gloves, and 240 knit winter hats. Most of these items have already been dispersed to folks in need, and the remaining stock will be depleted well before the cold weather ends.
Three of our departments distributed the grant funded purchases. Front Rooms, a respite and light day use resource in Eugene, distributed most of the items. Case managers from the Homeless department accessed gear for their clients. Some supplies, particularly sleeping bags, were distributed by CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets), White Bird’s mobile crisis service. The people who received gear were mostly unhoused residents in neighborhoods on the east side of Eugene, though some reached people in the greater Eugene/Springfield metro area.
White Bird is a collective environment organized to enable people to gain control of their social, emotional and physical well-being through direct service, education and community. We greatly appreciate the kind and expedient support we’ve received from the Jill Heiman Fund both for this project, and in the past. You helped us provide critically needed winter wear for Lane County’s unhoused and underserved community members.
Many thanks to the Jill Heiman Fund Committee and our beloved Fair Family!