January seemed to go by quick at the Community/Senior Center.
The Community Campus Park Development plan officially got underway. January was month 1 of 3 full months of robust public engagement. Chelsea worked with the team on creating a project fact sheet and public engagement flyer (available in both English and Spanish). These flyers are available at the community center and are being used for tabling events. A copy of the fact sheet was also mailed out to the neighbors closest to the park. Chelsea created a project webpage that has a lot of information on it along with copies of the fact sheet and public engagement flyer. The first open house took place at the Community Center on January 26th. 34 people signed in and we estimate there was close to a total of 50-60 people there.
Chelsea and John worked on updating the Department’s reconciliation policy to streamline it and also help out the accounting team.
Carol’s Teen Silent Disco is scheduled for March 17th. Chelsea helped by creating the flyer. Registration is now open for this event and sign ups have started. Carol collected $250 in sponsorships for this event and also received pizza as an in kind donation- way to go Carol! A special shout out to Jeff Aprati for always getting Facebook updated to reflect our events.
Mt. Storm started off with games in January at Oregon Trail Academy,
Firwood, Welches, and Cedar Ridge. 3rd and 4th grade games are during the
week and the 5th and 6th games are all on Saturdays at Cedar Ridge. Some high school kids that play on the high school basketball team are helping ref. We have a total of 222 kids that signed up for this program. There have been some challenges with staffing in regards to a lack of gym monitors and referees.
Some new recreation classes have become hits at the community center such as Kinderdance and Mad Science.
Amy, our new Recreation Coordinator, spent the month of January settling in. Her first major under taking was bringing back the K-2 Instructional Mountain Storm program. This involved creating lesson plans, ordering supplies, creating a flyer, building a webpage, and inputting information into our software system to allow registrations. We’re happy to report this filled up extremely fast (within a week) and is going well.
Amy also participated in some tabling events to promote the Community Campus Park project and our upcoming events like the Teen Silent Disco and the Community Garden. The seed swap was her largest tabling event with an estimated 100 people in attendance. Amy also created a flyer for a new recreation class- kid’s Tumbling. The first few sessions of these tumbling classes were very popular and filled up in a number of days. Way to go Carol for finding a tumbling instructor!
Caroleana stayed busy this month. She signed up 6 new people for Meals on Wheels and completed 19 Energy Assistance applications. 2 home visits were also completed- these are going well so far. She is working with a volunteer, Samantha, to bring back our Respite program. The Respite documentation is complete, including: intake forms, brochures and informational packets. We look forward to reopening this great program in March under Caroleana’s guidance. Caroleana has streamlined our bulletin boards in the entryway. She is currently learning a new tracking document for NAPIS and learned about Mandatory Reporting.
Marc took the seniors on multiple trips including the Dog Show, First Taste of Oregon, dine outs at Cheesecake factory and La Carreta, and a hike at Tickle Creek. He also learned and took over the Transportation Log for John. He rode along with Amy and John on their driver road tests and is now able to administer these tests himself. 945 meals were delivered in January to our Meals on Wheels Recipients.
An exciting development for John and the Center is that our grant check is on the way so we can start to do improvements to our Kitchen which will eventually enable us to start congregate meals again.
