Greetings and welcome to Friday! Looks like a damp weekend – time for some cozy meals and indoor projects!

 

Paul and Leslie attended The Ford Family Foundation’s Community Building Summit in Bend last weekend (the first in six years). The conference delivered numerous actionable sessions and some vibrant (and at times challenging) keynote speakers. Paul held a “table session” on Saturday night, sharing how EDALC uses game design to help forward Community and Economic Development efforts.

 

The whole EDALC team attended the ribbon cutting ceremony at Hatfield’s new Harboton Street Housing facility in South Beach. It was wonderful to share in the celebration of a nearly decade-long project and to hear heartfelt remarks from Bob Cowen (who seems to be enjoying retirement!).

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
  • CCFW – Sarah attended a strategic planning meeting for the Central Coast Food Web.
  • CWEDD – Sarah filmed b-roll around Lincoln, Linn, Lane and Benton county for the CWEDD video. She also reached out to potential interviewees to ask about projects in their city that the district has helped with.
      • OEDA Conference – The team continued to lock down the annual conference’s “Adventure Day” activities and bring in some local event sponsorship dollars.
      • Newport Rotary – Paul delivered a presentation to Rotary as part of their Economic and Community Development month – he explained the Cascades West Economic Development District, the CEDS planning document and the CW Innovation Hub. 
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Challenger Biosciences – Today we received our first hard estimates on the amount of organic material needed in order to facilitate PHA production in Newport. The next step is querying sources of potential organic waste.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Paul received an initial draft of the CWIH subgrant agreement for EDALC’s innovation support work in Lincoln County. He’ll review next week and has a scheduled meeting with RAIN Catalysts (the grant fiscal agent) to discuss.
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – This week, Stacie and Paul put together all of the updated documents, as well as an updated application, for the 2025-26 grant cycle. Ken Lipp, the county’s PIO, set up the grant landing page on their website. On Monday, Stacie will send out a MailChimp blast (and press release) to officially open this year’s grant program for submissions.
  • Major Employers Report – Sarah continued to reach out to local businesses for their employment numbers for the Major Employers Report.
  • Community Connecting
  • The Ford Family Foundation’s Rural Community Building Summit at the Riverhouse in Bend – As Paul mentioned in this week’s introduction, Leslie joined him at this cup-filling, rural network strengthening event. Leslie’s highlights included: 
  • Visiting Sisters’ new Hub co-working space (which includes their Sunday Farmers Market space, food demonstration facilities, and many inspiring entrepreneurial ecosystem and community building features). 
  • Meeting many RCBC counterparts in person for the first time. 
  • If anyone would like to learn more or connect on topics covered at the Summit – Leslie would love to connect. Leslie’s carpooling with Beatriz Botello was an excellent “Community Building in Cars” experience in both directions, especially in debriefing recent local Lincoln County and Summit experiences, including the illuminated blind spots we witnessed in a wide range of Summit keynotes and breakout sessions. 
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels – as well as the usual Friday roundup of central coast goings on. She also worked on the fall newsletter.
  • Admin
      • The team met at Nana’s for some comfort food and drinks + an extended team meeting on Thursday. The extra time was needed to cover all the updates and requests for feedback/team input!
      • Stacie completed the 10/2 BoD meeting minutes and began an EDALC office inventory and re-org. 

 

A reminder to save the date (November 6th, 3:30pm) – this will be our first in-person meeting of the new fiscal year, and we’ll be holding it at our Waldport offices. There will be some tasty treats, plus also some Pacific Sourdough bread for those who make the trek! We’ll be inviting some prospective new Directors to the meeting as well. Come and join us and see where we work!

 

That’s it for this week, thanks for ALL that you are doing out there. Keep us posted if you have anything you want us to share – we love hearing from you!

 

Cheers,

 

-The EDALC Team (Paul, Sarah, Leslie and Stacie)