Street Roots • Jan. 6-12, 2017
Vendors
Page 6
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Everly
BY LEONORA KO
STAFF W R IT E R
ason Everly came to Portland more than
17 years ago to do service with
AmeriCorps.
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It was one of the hardest, but one of the
best, things that I ever did tor myself,”
Jason said.
“I was on what they called an
EnviroCorps Team,” he said. “We were kind
of an offshoot of the CCC, the Civilian
Conservation Corps. It was an 11-member
team, and we did everything from
disconnecting downspouts to riparian zone
repair. The riparian zone is this area
between the bank of the creek and 10 to 12
feet inland.”
His team also built trails and six bridges
in Forest Park.
“There are two miles that I know
intimately, like the back of my hand: from
Fire Lane 51 to Old Germantown Road,” he
said.
After his AmeriCorps stint, Jason was an
instructor for a job training program at
Sisters ofthe Road, a nonprofit café that
provides meals plus
opportunities for the
homeless:
“Before I went to
Am eriCorps, I was a cook
They would wash dishes for a week, they’d
help prep for a week and they would plan
menus with me for a week - just to give
them some experience.”
After his instructor job, Jason hit some
rough patches in life and summed it up this
way: “I go through cycles of kind of getting
it together and things falling apart.”
Through Central City Concern, a
nonprofit that serves the homeless, he
found jobs from managing a catering office
at PGE Park to working as an employment
assistant helping others find jobs.
He complimented Central City Concern:
“They provide treatment, jobs and housing
in this community, and they’re the best at
providing all three of those. It’s kind of a
holistic thing, you know? All three of
those things are really important to j g f
integrate and try and get
somebody’s act together.”
Jason started selling the Street
Roots newspaper two months
ago, and his usual turf is at Next
Adventure, a sporting goods
store at Southeast Grand
j
Avenue and Stark Street.
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“It’s given me the
ability to offer
something in.
return, rather
than just
a l
panhandling,” he said.
“The biggest thing is that when people
finally do come and buy a paper, is that they
start to see you. Believe me, 90 percent of
the people are walking right on by - they
don’t see you, and they don’t want to.They
don’t want to face the fact that someone’s
suffering, regardless of whether it’s by their
own hand or not. But the ones that do buy
the paper, they see you.”
Jason also finds that the Street Roots
office is a respite from the street
“Every day I go in, and there are certain
things that I do,” he said. “I get coffee and
do a chore if I need to earn some papers. It
helps knowing that there’s a
place that I can go. I don’t
have to get a receipt to
use the bathroom. I can
.
have some dignity.”
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“And I can be
myself,” Jason said.
“Nobody’s really
judging me.”
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n a u c a r t s
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