September 8, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 9A
FROM FAITH TI O FOOD
‘Blue bag Sunday’ donations from Seaside church have huge impact for food bank
they are at, and showing them love
through food,” worship arts and stu-
dent ministries director Sam Hughes
said.
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
F
or the past four years, the
South Clatsop County Food
Bank had always counted on
the North Coast Family Fel-
lowship as a steady source
for donations. But at the beginning
of this year, regional manager Karla
Gann started to see more and more
blue bags fi lled to the brim with
food donations. Instead of receiving
500 to 800 pounds of food from the
church like she expected, she started
getting monthly donations of 800 to
1,400 pounds.
It’s called blue bag Sunday. The
fi rst Sunday of the month, the con-
gregation of the North Coast Family
Fellowship piles fruits, vegetables ,
canned goods and more into blue
bags that read “With Love” on the
side, and leave them in the church
for the food bank to pick up Monday.
This church alone makes up one-tenth
of all donations to the food bank.
It’s a type of donation Gann rare-
ly sees from a private entity, and she
said the impacts are huge.
“We can go from distributing 65
pounds of food to a family at one
time to 125 pounds. Before we were
able to give out about on average
three days worth of food to a recip-
ient,” Gann said. “Because of this
increase, now I can give out closer
to fi ve days worth of food at a time.
This helps get people through.”
In Clatsop County, that means
helping the 390 to 470 families who
come in each month needing food to
get by before payday.
“It keeps the money fl owing. We
are saving $700 to $1,000 a month to
keep the lights and to build a reserve
instead of spending it on building up
our food supply,” she said. “Every-
one here is a volunteer. So it’s sig-
nifi cant.”
‘With Love’
When John Neagle joined the
North Coast Family Fellowship last
October, the pastor liked how the
ministry had connected with the
community through donations to the
Meeting a need
South Clatsop County Food Bank re-
gional manager Karla Gann stands next
to stacks of donations recently made by
a local church. Gann said the amount of
donated goods has increased dramati-
cally since the beginning of the year.
COLIN MURPHEY/ EO MEDIA GROUP
food bank. So starting in January, he
challenged his congregation to do
more.
Tyler Evans, a volunteer with
the church, said the offi ce started
greeting people at the door with blue
bags inscribed with the words “With
Love.”
“It’s easier to donate when you
have a reminder,” Evans said.
Neagle said he made expanding
the relationship with the food bank,
which the church has had since
2012, a priority because it is an easy,
yet impactful, way to connect with
the community.
“When people offer, sometimes
it’s just a few items, and other times
they bring two bags packed to the
gills that takes two hands to carry,”
Neagle said. “Sharing helps the per-
son you are sharing with, but it’s also
helpful for those who are giving the
food. We’re not just trying to give you
a can of food; we’re trying to share
God’s love through that can of food.”
Children’s m inistries director An-
nie Utterback said helping to feed
the community is an important way
as Christians to be a helping hand for
all.
“This is a way for us to reach
out without people having to walk
through our door,” she said.
The fellowship plans to keep ex-
panding its contribution to the food
bank, as well as local shelters and
other social services, Neagle said.
“It’s about blessing people where
An estimated 25 percent of c oun-
ty residents qualify for emergency
food assistance, Clatsop County
Regional Food Bank Director Mar-
lin Martin said, a fi gure that has re-
mained steady for the past fi ve years.
More than 6,850 people used emer-
gency food resources last year.
“We have continued for the past
11 years to see increases in the
number of emergency food boxes
being distributed and the number
of people visiting food banks, even
though the population hasn’t grown
signifi cantly,” Martin said. “Those
people living in poverty have fallen
into deeper crevasses of poverty. We
count each household as individual
visits, and we see the same house-
holds coming more often.”
Clatsop County isn’t alone . The
Oregon Center for Public Policy re-
ported last year that 1 in 6 families
statewide lack consistent access to
adequate food . Oregon has also seen
the largest increase in food insecurity,
spiking 18.4 percent since the Great
Recession. “We don’t have enough
living wage jobs for people to meet
their food needs,” Martin said.
To meet this steadily increasing
need, Martin said the regional food
bank is working on securing more
funds to implement a mobile soup
kitchen later this fall — much like
the mobile produce bank that has
provided fresh vegetables and fruits
for the past three years.
It’s not a problem Gann sees
going away anytime soon. But if
she can keep handing out fi ve days
worth of food instead of three, she
sees it as one more way to help peo-
ple just make it through.
“I have a passion for food, and a
passion for people,” she said. “We
want to provide as much variety and
choice as we can for people who vis-
it us, and donations like this keeps
us from falling into just rice and
beans.”
‘Social investment’ ready to gamble on preschool
Schools,
investors could
see returns
Long-term return
By R.J. Marx
Cannon Beach Gazette
A new program could
bring private sector funding
for preschool education in
Clatsop County.
County Manager Cameron
Moore and Sydney Van Dusen,
coordinator of Way to Wellville,
came to Seaside’s Downtown
Development Association meet-
ing Aug. 10 with plans for sup-
plementing public funds with
private investment to help pro-
vide preschool for children who
otherwise could not afford it.
Clatsop County is one of
fi ve communities around the
country to participate in the
Way to Wellville program,
which came to the county in
2014.
Moore, who serves on
County Manager
Cameron Moore
the group’s economic devel-
opment committee, said the
team considered lack of pre-
school in the county a signifi -
cant impediment to economic
development .
“If you have children but
you don’t have a place for
those children to go while you
go to work, you may not be
working,” Moore said.
Employers want to know
their employees’ families
are taken care of, so having
high-quality preschool in the
county has economic impacts,
Moore said.
In December, the county
was approved for $350,000 in
federal grant money from the
U.S. Department of Education,
he said, money which did not
require local matching funds.
“Since then we’ve been do-
ing a lot of work to see if we
could in some way provide
additional preschool opportu-
nities for 600 children in our
county,” Moore said.
That number captures
some, if not all, of the children
who don’t have access to those
services, Moore said.
One option is to “pay for
success,” he said, through a
social investment concept.
“How do you get the private
sector to pay for things the
public sector typically pays
for?” Moore asked. “There
are private investors willing to
invest in these types of invest-
ments. Why not tap into that?”
Programs in other coun-
ties have addressed issues like
homelessness and veterans’
Clatsop County schools
look to combat absenteeism
By Edward Stratton
EO Media Group
As students return to
school, educators are search-
ing for ways to combat absen-
teeism — a nagging issue that
hamstrings learning and con-
sistently places Oregon near
the bottom nationally.
On average, more than
one-fi fth of students in Clat-
sop County were chronically
absent in the 2015-16 school
year, according to the most
recent data from the state De-
partment of Education.
Students are counted as
chronically absent if they
miss at least 10 percent of
school days, out of 180 days
in a given year. More than
100,000 students in Oregon fi t
the defi nition in the 2015-16
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Students roam the halls of
Astoria High School look-
ing for the fi rst classroom
of the day.
school year, including more
than 1,000 in Clatsop County.
In the 2015-16 school
year, 17.6 percent of students
in the Astoria School District
were chronically absent, along
with 18.5 percent in Warren-
ton-Hammond, 26.7 percent in
Seaside, 22.3 percent in Knap-
pa and 24.5 percent in Jewell.
Across the board, chronic
absenteeism started higher in
preschool and kindergarten,
lowered toward middle school
as students became more in-
dependent of parents, and
grew again in high school.
Research shows that miss-
ing school can lead to decreased
academic performance, future
attendance issues, increased
disciplinary problems and a
dramatically lower chance of
graduating high school.
The University of Chicago
Consortium on School Re-
search found that 87 percent of
freshmen in high school who
missed four or fewer days of
school per semester graduat-
ed. That rate dipped to 63 per-
cent for students who missed
between fi ve and nine days,
and 41 percent for those who
missed 10 to 14 days.
services , Moore said. The ini-
tial money is private, but the
private investor is paid through
public dollars.
Moore said the funding
could reduce the number of
children who need special ed-
ucation when they get to the
K-12 system, or prepare young
children so they are better aca-
demically. Returns come over
the long term.
“We go to the private sec-
tor and say, ‘Would you pay
for this?’ If they say ‘yes,’ and
they invest, they make some
money — typically 5 percent,”
Moore said. “If we don’t
achieve the outcome — they
lose their money. If they put
up the money and we achieve
these outcomes, we get what
we want and you get a return
on investment.”
Families benefi t
Children could receive free
universal preschool if they
qualify, Van Dusen added. “It
would be for those families
who cannot afford preschool
at this time,” she said.
Families at 300 percent
of poverty level would be
available to participate in the
preschool program. Since in-
come of $24,000 for a family
of four is considered poverty
level, a family with an income
of up to $70,000 could be eli-
gible, Van Dusen said.
Funds would “bring ev-
erybody up to a higher stan-
dard,” Moore said, working
with existing local preschools
to provide greater access for
county children, kindergarten
readiness and teacher train-
ing, among other goals.
Preschool teachers in the
county make about one half
what kindergarten teachers
earn, he said. “That doesn’t
seem right to us.”
If the program is success-
ful, the cost of individual-
ized instruction programs for
struggling students — which
can reach $20,000 per year,
per child — can be signifi -
cantly reduced, Van Dusen
said. “If you think of that over
12 years, that adds up.”
If expenses can be reduced
to $10,000 per child, she said,
school districts could see sav-
ings of $120,000.
Savings could be used to
cover investment costs and
return. Additional savings
stay with the school district,
she added.
The nonprofi t Social Fi-
nance, from Boston, Massa-
chusetts, is visiting the county
to discuss options, Van Dusen
said.
Next steps involve meet-
ings between investors and
the community for data gath-
ering and assessments.
The committee is in the
informational phase to deter-
mine if this model or another
model will work for the coun-
ty in terms of enhancing pre-
school opportunities.
A feasibility study is ex-
pected in six to nine months,
Moore said.