Greetings and welcome to Friday! It looks to be a gorgeous weekend coming up!

 

Thanks to everyone who could make it to EDALC’s August Board of Directors meeting via Zoom yesterday – it was great to have folks back together after a short summer break. The staff will start work to pull together a scope of work to have a facilitator help us craft a new Vision and Mission statement and develop a concise, high level strategic plan. Staff will also work to explore updating  and expanding our organizational policies (thanks to Jason for the connection to Sasquatch HR!)

 

This weekend is CTSI’s Nesika Illahee Pow-Wow (https://ctsi.nsn.us/nesika-illahee-pow-wow/) in Siletz. At today’s noon sponsorship deadline, our collaborative Take Action Lincoln County website raised $11,300 from 28 sponsors for the Pow-Wow dance awards. CTSI’s Lisa Norton and our own Leslie will be participating on a keynote panel in October to talk about this work at the OCVA People’s Coast Summit.

 

Last weekend, the whole team came together to deliver the fifth Art, Oysters & Brews festival in downtown Toledo (this year it also included the Chalk the Block event). Hats off to Sarah for handling the lion’s share of the logistical planning and on site work. It was a great event – perfect weather, great crowds and some amazing music (the art, beer and oysters weren’t too shabby either!)!

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Art Toledo – Paul, Sarah and Stacie met on Tuesday to talk through the Art, Oysters & Brews event – what went well, what didn’t go so well (such as the initial overnight security firm not showing up!) and how future events could be improved. Stacie uploaded an impressive number of photos and videos to the ART Toledo Drive for future marketing purposes. She also contacted Chalk the Block contest winners and coordinated prize pickup and/or delivery. 
      • OEDA – Paul, Sarah, and Stacie attended a conference committee check-in. The team brainstormed tour tracks for an “Adventure Day” that will be part of the Oregon Economic Development Association annual conference, held at Salishan in late October. The Adventure Day will be Tuesday, October 28th (Paul’s birthday!) – next week, some of the OEDA team will be on site to finalize details with Salishan and then take a tour of the potential adventure sites.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Website: Stacie installed a redirect plugin to allow for lower-lift blog posts using external blue economy content and published this month’s blog post.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • CWIH – The Cascades West Innovation Hub stakeholders met on Friday morning to begin planning an inaugural CWIH event to help economic support organizations better understand the need of innovative, traded sector companies.
  • Community Connecting
  • Juntos en Colaboración Monthly Zoom Meeting – For this week’s meeting of Latine Community leaders and service organizations, Megan Davis presented her Phd. report that was made possible by the Juntos en Colaboración partner network, Café Resource Model events, and OSU Extension and SeaGrant community education events. These relationship and trust-building gatherings held since 2020 laid the foundation for the semi-structured interviews that informed the “Ocean Conservation Values Among the Latino Community in Newport, Oregon” report. This project was funded by The Nature Conservancy, and its success led to funding for similar studies in Tillamook and Clatsop Counties, which will be compiled into an academic study that can help inform and fund future aligned, barrier-reducing efforts. Megan tabled at the 2024 Café Aquarium and highlighted the event as an ideal example of a barrier-reduced, collaborative opportunity that showed the Latine community’s interest in learning more about the ocean and conservation efforts. This effort may come full circle, as the study’s budget includes remaining funds for sharing the results with the community, which may be applicable to food costs if Megan and her team are able to join the 2025 Café Aquarium. 
  • 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.
  • Project Work
        • Stacie updated the TALC website and 2025 store to reflect the closure of the 2025 donation/sponsorship period.
  • Fund Development
  • This week, Paul met with Rural Prosperity Partners and the Tillamook Coast Visitors Association to see if there might be some benefit in applying for a Business Oregon Technical Assistance grant together (with EDALC as lead) – it looks like there might be some great advantages. Over the next two weeks, staff will be working (along with some help from Greg Price and our SBDC) to dial in the projects for the application.

 

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! Have a wonderful weekend!

 

Cheers,

 

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