Student Contributor -S. Coffin
Our Place Community Outreach works to provide the essentials of modern living- food, personal hygiene products, bus passes, clothing, laundry services, etc., to families in Spokane who cannot otherwise access them. Their mission statement highlights their goal of providing emergency resources to those in Spokane. Through a combination of outreach, goods, and vital services, Our Place Community Outreach looks to foster an environment where opportunities and support are available for people living in poverty.
Our Place Community Outreach tries to make life more livable for low-income families. They serve anyone who’s hungry as often as they need it. They distribute diapers, feminine hygiene products (particularly important for women in poverty, whose personal health suffers hugely from a lack of hygiene items), makeup, and assorted personal care items because they believe being poor is not a moral failure. They see that people victimized by societal inequality do not need to suffer through the many thousand physical and emotional cuts and humiliations that a threadbare social safety net has made a reality for impoverished Americans. Envisioning a more equitable society, their organization works to alleviate the most severe symptoms of poverty.
Among other resources, they also provide free bus passes- 10 per day, highlighting the role transportation (and the lack of it) plays in perpetuating poverty. OPCO grants can cover Avista bills up to $300, a total that is the difference between turning off the light after your child goes to bed and explaining to them why people they don’t know decided to take away their heating in the winter. These people do what needs to be done.
Donations, donations, donations. Our Place is privately funded, meaning they rely on the community to keep their pantry full and their served families fed. The most important items besides food are hygiene products and diapers. These are vital goods whose high costs and lack of availability force families to choose between starving and reusing soiled items for infants women. Students can create an incentive for families with too much to give to those who don’t have enough in various ways. Drives (of all kinds), donation bins, school-wide initiatives, contests, etc., can all be used to acquire the resources people in Spokane need to survive.
There are also opportunities to volunteer. Civic engagement via well-structured activities could provide the foundation of a cultural shift for the students in your classroom that solidifies the most essential habits and beliefs of successful leaders, citizens, and individuals. Empathy, leadership, civic duty- all of these are values you can model and reinforce through volunteer work with Our Place Community Outreach.
Call their office to begin planning what your class can do to make life livable for people in poverty. You and your students can be the difference between survival and death for a family that lives in your community. Our children learn from watching us; let’s show them what it means to be a member of our community.
