Greetings and welcome to Friday and our last staff update for the month of April – the speed of this month flying by is truly one for the record books!

 

Much of this week was spent getting ready for our Wednesday event in Yachats (details below) as well as upcoming events like the CWIH event in Eugene and the YEP Pitch Event in Lincoln City. Truly a busy time, but the team is looking forward to some solid collaborative work time in the office (though we’ll have to wait a few more weeks for that!).

 

Also, Sarah’s out for a few days – Trystan has returned from his Alaskan fishing work and gets to spend a few days on terra firma.

 

Here’s our staff update for the week:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • ART Toledo – Sarah sent out a mailchimp email to over 150 local artists to save the date for this year’s Art, Oysters & Brews event and also included Samaritan’s call for artwork for their new Treatment & Recovery facility, please share the opportunity if you can! The info pdf is linked here.
      • Yachats – On Wednesday evening, the whole EDALC team trekked to Yachats for a community engagement civic budgeting game event. Paul had been working on the game design since late February and coded it on EDALC’s web server in April. The whole team built the “deck” of 50+ budget cards, and we did a full run through of the event earlier in the week. The game was a hit – fostering lively dialogue amongst the attendees. The game was designed so that it can work for multiple municipalities.
      • Stacie coordinated a meeting for herself, Paul, and the Toledo BMO Branch Manager on May 1st to discuss potential opportunities for partnership including BMO’s Zero Barriers to Business Program.
      • Creative Economies Playbook for Lincoln County (funded by Northwest Oregon Works) Stacie began drafting content for the playbook, and met with Leslie to brainstorm around local examples/case studies + the best approach to engaging our creative entrepreneurs and collecting their insights. Our goal is to have a draft completed by mid-June with the full project wrapping up at the end of the summer.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Central Coast Food Web – Paul met with Executive Director Jim King to help them untangle some grants confusion on their end – mostly arising from the transition from a volunteer organization to one with a full time director. Together, they got things sorted out.
      • NOAA Young Fishermans Grant – Over the past few weeks, Paul has been working with OCCC, OSU, Oregon Sea Grant, Rural Prosperity Partners and the Tillamook Coast Visitors Association on a NOAA grant application. The grant was submitted midweek with OCCC as the lead applicant.
  • O2IH Website – Paul, Sarah, and Stacie met on Monday to review the website and collect feedback which Stacie organized and provided to Shawn. Today, Paul and Stacie met with Shawn for the biweekly check-in, and site content is 99% complete with a couple of outstanding changes on both sides. Shawn will focus on QA and accessibility tasks over the next 2 weeks and staff training has been scheduled for May 15th! 
      • Oregon Maritime Energy – Paul met with Don Gerhart (Challenger Biosciences and Oregon Maritime Energy) to discuss some potential alternative paths to fermentation-based electricity generation since the future availability of SBIR and STTR grants are up in the air. They also discussed the possibility of a new bioglass plastics plant being located in Newport.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Next Tuesday, EDALC heads to Eugene for a Cascades West Innovation Hub event hosted by Collaborative EDO at the Ford Alumni Center. The event is entitled: Ecosystem Partner Showcase and Simulation Event.
      • ROI Video Project – Sarah reached out to a couple local business owners to be featured in the Business Oregon “No Wrong Place to Start” video and filled out a survey from TZOM with ideas for filming locations and talking points. 
      • YEP – Sarah sent out an eventbrite invitation email for the Youth Entrepreneurship Pitch Event, which you can RSVP for at tinyurl.com/2025YEP She also coordinated a caterer for the event.
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated listings on Oregon Prospector and added new ones.
  • Community Connecting
  • Coastal Communities’ Drinking Water Protection Wins – Leslie caught up with ODEQ’s Alyssa Leidel from the Coastal Drinking Water Workshop Series design team on Thursday. Alyssa’s preparing a presentation for an upcoming conference of multiple Western State agencies on the efficacy and positive impacts of the Workshop Series Model, which is aligned with the Rural Community Builder Approach. This week, it was announced that 4 out of 6 communities awarded OWEB’s Drinking Water Safeguard Grants were coastal communities who were participants or presenters in the Workshop Series! Leslie can’t help but correlate the story-sharing, network-building, and progress-forwarding impacts of the Workshop Series to the coastal communities’ successes in those awards. This approach has brought together water providers, elected officials, environmentalists, state agencies, technical assistance providers, and corporate forest representatives in civil, productive, and enjoyable gatherings that have been steadily helping communities progress toward their drinking water system goals. The model can be applied to many other long-term multi-sector challenges facing rural communities, and Leslie’s excited to continue hearing about the changes in practices the model is influencing throughout Oregon DEQ and other state entities that are learning from the model’s successes.
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication Stacie posted Friday community roundup and shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels.
  • Project Work Stacie confirmed next steps for publicizing this year’s Pow-Wow sponsorship opportunity with Andi at CTSI . She also followed up with Tyler at Primaltones to start working on details for the annual YBEF/EDALC meeting on 6/26. 
  • Admin
  • Tax Return – Paul met with the account at Fitzsimmons CPA who is now taking over our taxes to answer some questions as she wraps up EDALC return (due May 15th).

 

Reminder: Next Thursday is our May EDALC Board of Directors meeting (via Zoom at 3:30pm). Here is the Zoom info:

 

Topic: May EDALC BoD meeting

Time: May 1, 2025 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09&omn=85383886662

 

Meeting ID: 917 810 4987

Passcode: 0NyksK

 

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, and don’t be stingy with your ideas – we love hearing from you!

 

Cheers,

 

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