3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 15, 2017
Seaside students step up for Laundry Love
High-schoolers
volunteer for
local program
By KATHERINE
LACAZE
For EO Media Group
SEASIDE — What can a
handful of coins, some laun-
dry detergent and friendly ser-
vice do for a person? Two Sea-
side High School students
have spent months learning the
answer to this question by vol-
unteering for the local Laundry
Love program.
“It’s a small way to make a
big difference,” senior Marysol
Alcantar said.
Alcantar and fellow senior
Channene Prendergast are
doing their Pacifica Projects
with Laundry Love, a nation-
wide charity that has been
administered at the local level
by nonprofit At the Water’s
Gate for about four years. It is
held from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
the second Saturday of each
month at The Laundromat off
U.S. Highway 101.
The students’ involvement
began in October 2016, when
they helped sort clothes and set
up for the annual Winter Cloth-
ing Giveaway at the Novem-
ber Laundry Love. Since then,
Alcantar has attended and
assisted with each Laundry
Love event, an ongoing expe-
rience that has had an impact
on her.
“To me, this was new,” she
said. “I had never really volun-
teered in any way, and I like it
a lot. I feel like I’ll probably
keep going still, even after we
graduate.”
Her desire to continue help-
ing with the program is fueled
by the response of the people
who are served, about 20 to 25
per month. Many of them are
regulars who come each time.
“They’re just as excited to
get their clothes cleaned as they
were the month before,” she
said. “It’s nice to see how they
react toward the help they get.”
In addition to providing
funds for each individual or
family to do two loads of laun-
dry, the program also offers free
hygienic products — includ-
ing socks, soap, deodorant
and toothpaste — and coffee
and snacks or a small meal. As
many of the people who attend
the Laundry Love events are
homeless or underprivileged,
“we definitely want to look out
for them,” Prendergast said.
Submitted Photo
Seaside High School senior Marysol Alcantar feeds coins
into a machine at The Laundromat in Seaside for a client
during a Laundry Love event in April. Alcantar is helping
with the local Laundry Love program for her Pacifica Project.
Prendergast, who usually
works on weekends, mostly is
aiding the program from behind
the scenes. She assists Shir-
ley Yates — who runs At the
Water’s Gate with her husband,
Carl — at the office. Some of
her responsibilities include
organizing supplies, updating
records, shopping for hygienic
items, contacting news outlets,
advertising the monthly events
and other administrative work.
Diving in deeper
As with any Pacifica Proj-
ect — a requirement for grad-
uation at Seaside High School
— the students must tie in their
volunteer work to the topics of
their senior papers.
Alcantar’s senior paper is
focused on school bullying. At
first, she said, she wasn’t sure
how the two would relate, but
while gathering information,
she learned how students can
be bullied for their clothing or
appearance. Alcantar discov-
ered that “for them to struggle
not to be able to have clothes
or wash them as often, they
could get bullied at school for
it,” she said.
Prendergast’s
paper
explored the idea of gender
equality in the workforce.
During her time assisting with
Laundry Love, she came to
find most of the other vol-
unteers also were women. A
question she addressed in her
paper was whether socially
reinforced stereotypes about
compassion or nurturing being
feminine qualities played a
role in that outcome.
“I discovered it’s mostly
society that stereotypes gen-
ders into thinking they have
to do things,” she said, adding
these stereotypes then often
perpetuate themselves.
A change of
perspective
Both students expressed
how their experiences have
led to greater insight into con-
cepts of homelessness, grati-
tude and service.
“You always know not
everybody has everything you
have, but it’s more realistic
once you’re there and see peo-
ple struggling,” Prendergast
said. “You realize how good
you actually have it. It makes
you want to appreciate the
things you have, even a thing
as simple as being able to
wash your clothes at home.”
Going forward, she wants
to continue to target her
donated time toward organi-
zations or service projects that
benefit homeless individuals,
such as food banks, building
homeless shelters or programs
like Laundry Love. Alcantar
agreed that was a population
that is underserved.
“People don’t really take
them into consideration, and
they don’t get as much help as
they should,” she said.
There is even a tendency
for people of privilege to
dehumanize those struggling
with homelessness, Prender-
gast added.
“They just kind of see them
as not helping themselves, so
we shouldn’t help them,” she
said. “They don’t realize that
some people need a little bit
of help before they can help
themselves.”
“You will see the differ-
ence that it makes in (peo-
ple’s) lives, just by giving
them three quarters to put into
the machine,” she said, add-
ing no matter how many times
a person hears about the ben-
efits of the program, “you
won’t really realize it until
you’re there helping.”
Oregon legislators await Tuesday’s quarterly revenue forecast
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Lawmakers are
anticipating the next quarterly
revenue forecast, which is due
to be released Tuesday.
The quarterly forecast pro-
vides an outlook both for rev-
enue and for Oregon’s overall
economy.
It’s the last forecast before
the Legislature adjourns in July.
As such, it provides the clear-
est picture of how much reve-
nue legislators can expect to
work with, and how much they
must raise, as they hammer
out the state’s budget. It will
also provide
lawmakers a
clearer idea
of whether
Oregon’s
“kicker” —
the personal
Josh Lehner income tax
kickback that
occurs when receipts exceed
projections by 2 percent —
may be triggered this year.
In a recent post on his blog,
Oregon Economic Analysis,
state economist Josh Lehner
called the May forecast “the
single most important thing our
office does.”
The last quarterly fore-
cast showed a $1.6 billion gap
between expected revenues and
the cost of maintaining state
services at their current lev-
els. That figure could go up or
down with Tuesday’s forecast.
Cutbacks, tax reform
There’s some public dis-
agreement among legislators
and among interest groups over
how to close whatever gap is
projected.
Although talk of “cost con-
tainment” has come to the fore
in the past few weeks, with leg-
islators and the governor touting
their plans for cutting back on
spending, so too has tax reform.
Lawmakers on a bicameral
tax reform committee are dis-
I got screened.
Now it’s your turn.
cussing a commercial activity
tax in lieu of the state’s corpo-
rate income tax, combined with
decreases in income taxes.
Speaker of the House Tina
Kotek, D-Portland, unveiled a
plan May 4 to raise $2.1 billion
by taxing certain businesses
t
c
e
l
Re-E
through a commercial activity
tax. Under her plan the money
would be spent on education
and social services.
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CAMPBELL
PORT COMMISSIONER #1
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Experience
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