Groundwork Portland

Voice for Empowerment (VFE)

OPAL People and Policy Campaign (OPP)

BREATHE
Air Quality, Asthma, Community Organizing, and Public Health
OPAL was awarded additional funding to begin organizing around the potential of disproportionate asthma rates and air pollution burdens faced by communities in Outer SE Portland and NE Portland. This campaign will address the following issues: organizing communities around air quality monitoring; identifying polluting facilities and the chemical composition of the air; and increasing community participation in decision-making processes that dictate these impacts.

BREATHE
Air Quality, Asthma, Community Organizing, and Public Health
OPAL was awarded additional funding to begin organizing around the potential of disproportionate asthma rates and air pollution burdens faced by communities in Outer SE Portland and NE Portland. This campaign will address the following issues: organizing communities around air quality monitoring; identifying polluting facilities and the chemical composition of the air; and increasing community participation in decision-making processes that dictate these impacts.

VOICE FOR EMPOWERMENT (VFE)
Youth Visioning, Leadership Development, and Cultural Diversity
The mission of the Voice for Empowerment project is to empower low-income youth from undeserved communities to find their voice and use it as an instrument for change. Through participation in this work, the students will begin to use spoken word poetry and art as a means of processing and expressing the issues that affect them around environmental racism and oppression.

OPAL PEOPLE AND POLICY CAMPAIGN (OPPC)
Policy, Political Advocacy, Government Accountability for Environmental Justice!
Along with the community organizing work, OPAL is concerned with the lack of voice and opportunity in local government--Portland is unique in having 5 levels of government authority (Federal, State, County, City and METRO, the only regionally elected government in the United States). To that end, OPAL has crafted a legislative summary of environmental justice work for its' OPAL People and Policy Campaign (OPP), as well as the 2007 General Legislative session in Salem. OPAL wrote the summary as part of the Oregon Conservation Network (OCN), an advocacy arm of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV), and hopes to broaden the work of the OPP campaign to address policy and ordinance issues around gentrification and displacement, toxic exposure, citizens right-to-know, and inclusionary zoning.