Author: vbinnin2

Encouraging Community Health and Physical Activity During a Pandemic

Posted on by vbinnin2

Decorative banner with author's photo and name of articleBy Emily Whittier, Community Food Systems Coordinator, OSU Extension Service Wasco County

The food demonstrations, nutrition and physical environment assessments in schools, and the volunteer trainings typically associated with the role of the Oregon State University Cooperative Extension RARE position all came to a halt in March 2020. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, I was in graduate school, moping about canceled conferences, attending classes at the mercy of my professors’ shaky Vermont internet, and wondering what in the heck I was going to be able to do after my August graduation. An alert of Food Systems Coordinator positions caught my eye, and suddenly September found me preparing to be the new Community Food Systems Coordinator for Wasco County Cooperative Extension.

I soon jumped into meetings of all kinds: food access, Coronavirus, physical activity. Fit in the Gorge is a group that brings together community stakeholders who have a role in public health, specifically related to physical activity and fitness. During the first meeting I attended, a project and partnership were born when another AmeriCorps member, the Health Promotion Vista at North Central Public Health District (NCPHD), and I took on a “physical activity passport” project.

Image of Sorosis Park courtesy of NWPRD

Set to make its premier in spring 2021, the passport will bring together physical activity, safe socialization, and local history and attractions. Kiddos and their families can earn points for visiting parks, doing exercises, going to local museums, and completing scavenger hunts. The objective? Making it easy and fun to exercise in the absence of regular physical education classes, sports, and playdates. The incentive? Prizes, of course!

The passport will be a tangible product of collaboration within and across organizations and between AmeriCorps programs. OSU Extension, NCPHD, and North Wasco Parks and Recreation Department all support the project with various resources and ideas. In return, the project helps address community needs and goals. Cooperative Extension and NCPHD strive to promote personal health and well-being, and one of the needs cited in the NWPRD 2019 Master Plan is an increased focus on serving and improving amenities for small children and teens. The passport hopes to address this need by giving these age groups a new reason to go to the parks and providing them with creative ideas for activities to do there.

Image of City Park courtesy of NWPRD

While securing the support of local organizations is crucial, we needed to make sure the most important voice was included: the community’s. Of course, community engagement is a little easier said than done in a pandemic. And parents? Busier than ever. Youth? A crucial stakeholder, but traditional avenues of student outreach—going into classrooms, surveying kids already using a park—were off-limits.  Fortunately, collaboration saved the day yet again when my Extension colleagues invited us to present in a Juntos meeting and let us talk with students in three different 4-H groups. We interviewed local youth from grades 4 through 12 and distributed an online survey, where kids or parents representing toddlers to high school students answered question about the passport and what they would like to see in it (and, even more importantly, if they would use it).

In conjunction with the passport, we are putting together a Google map that allows people to find places based on their features e.g., good walking routes or open fields. The map is a tool for community members to easily navigate the passport, find places to be physically active, and access directions wherever they’d like to go. The map will be hosted on Jump in the Gorge, an NCPHD website promoting opportunities for being active. This will allow the map to be used by anyone at any time.

Over and over again in our conversations with students, we heard that they missed playing with friends, and many—especially the younger kids—had fewer opportunities to be physically active. At the same time, The Dalles is home to beautiful scenery, outdoor space, and a rich history. Our hope for the passport is that it brings excitement and enthusiasm back to physical activity, and encourages the community to utilize the many local parks and open spaces. So, stay tuned for the premier of the 2021 The Dalles Physical Activity Passport! And yes—we are taking suggestions for a catchier name.

Photo of the author smiling at the camera while standing in front of the mighty Columbia RiverAbout the author, Emily Whittier: Emily grew up in New England, where she considers a small town in New Hampshire to be her home. Emily got her start in food watching her grandfather make caldo verde and fava beans, and became involved in agriculture when she joined a 4H rabbit club at 5 years old. The love for food and agriculture never left, and she has participated in several different areas of the food system, including production, food service, and distribution. She got her undergraduate degree at Smith College, where she studied gender, food, and policy. While there, she worked at a food pantry and thought a lot about the emergency food system, which led her to pursue a Master’s in Food and Agriculture Law and Policy. While in graduate school, she worked with the Center for Food and Agriculture Systems at Vermont Law to research food policy in the corrections sector, and she conducted a rural food security assessment after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Some of her top food system interests include food and land justice, food and incarceration, and food and migration.

Interested in gaining food systems experience of your own? Are you looking for a life changing experience in rural Oregon? Learn more about serving with the RARE AmeriCorps Program. Applications for Year 28 (2021-22) due April 23, 2021.

The Need for a New Conservation

Posted on by vbinnin2

 

Banner photo with article title and author photo with some fun spots and flourishes

The Need for a New Conservation:

  • Coastal Communities are experiencing water insecurity during the summer months.
  • Protection of Forested Watersheds is vital to the preservation of local water supplies
  • In order to accomplish this there needs to be collaborative action to create a new conservation focused on the health of human communities, along with the protection of habitat and species.

Photo of a trail, surrounded by salal, leading to a wooden fence overlooking the ocean as the sun sits low in the sky.In the tall, misty forests of the Oregon Coast water drips from the ancient, moss covered trees. Though the mists mute the lush green landscape in an eerie haze, far off through the clouds you can hear the crash of ocean surf pounding on volcanic rock formed in a fiery explosion o’ some 50 million years ago. In the uplands of the dense coastal forests, on sunny afternoons the sweet smell of fern and fir fill the air and nourish the soul. In this rugged landscape of sublime beauty, the very earth beneath your boots feels old. Its these ancient forests that sparked the historic conflict between conservationists and the timber industry in the 1980s and 90s, often referred to as the timber wars. Due to their location and climate the forests of the Oregon Coast are some of the most productive in the world, at its peak producing 8.1 billion board feet a year. Timber production fueled the European settlement of the area in the late 1800s and over time built many of the towns that populate Highway 101 today.

The sounds of chainsaws in the valleys and hills today are far less frequent than 50 years ago. In the late 1980s conflict over timber harvesting practices on the Oregon coast garnered national attention. Conservationists and environmentalists were concerned at the rapid decrease in the old forests that used to dominate the region and even more concerned for the animal species that called these old trees home. A small species of owl called the Spotted Owl became the poster animal for the national movement to conserve these forests after being added to the endangered species list. This move by environmentalists created legal protection from logging in the old forests the owl called home. While this win was celebrated by environmentalists across the country, the families in the towns fueled by timber were less ecstatic. To them, these urban environmentalists were coming out of their universities to tell them to shut down the mills that put food on their families tables for year; telling them the profession that had historically provided a living wage and opportunity for the working man of the coast was no longer acceptable. To the working families who lived and breathed timber this was nothing short of an existential attack on their way of life. The spotted owl and the concepts of conservation that came with the activists became a sign of the enemy for these people of the coast. What resulted was a prolonged legal and social conflict pitting environmentalists against the timber industries and working-class families the fall out of which, to this day, can be seen in furrowed brow of an old landowner when someone mentions the word conservation.

A photo taken of the underside of a sword fern with tall conifers in the mist behind itToday, the landscape of conservation looks different. The old timber towns have rebuilt into tourist destinations, prized for their scenic undeveloped lands. Logging on government and private lands has been resigned to areas deeper in the landscape, out of view from the widely traveled coastal highway. Although heated confrontations over cutting trees has faded from the region new issues have emerged. The world’s climate is changing, and communities everywhere are beginning to see changes in the natural systems that have supported them for so long. On the Oregon Coast the freshwater streams and rivers that provide drinking water to small towns are drying up in the summer months. As the summers get hotter and dryer the streams that provide water are yielding less water for treatment. In order to protect the streams that provide essential water to these communities it is important to protect the forest around the streams. Forested watersheds are more able to hold and store water in the soil which leads to more, higher quality water being fed into streams and rivers. The protection of these watershed areas is crucial to the survival of these communities as climate change continues to augment our natural systems. Many of these watersheds have a variety of owners from private landowners and timber companies to state and federal management agencies like the Forest Service. To conserve these forests requires a new form of conservation that centers environmental health for the benefit of humans and ecologies as a unified goal instead of competing values.

This lesson goes beyond the rocky coast of Oregon. All across the world communities are facing challenges and changes due to changing weather and climate. From his experiences working in conservation, this author believes that it is time we reassess how we think about nature. On Oregon’s coast, what is good for the forest and its inhabitants is equally good for the people living in the adjacent towns. So too is the health of our ecologies everywhere beneficial to human life in a wide array of ways. These issues are global ones to be sure and while no one can fix this looming issue alone we can all act to benefit our communities. Echoing the old adage: think global, act local, there is work to be  done everywhere but the best place to start is in your own back yard.

Landscape of the Oregon coastline, rocky and rugged, with turbulent waves crashing, on a clear blue sky day

Photo of the author standing in the sun in front of a rock. He has a friendly smile.About the author, Sam Hillmann: Sam grew up in Columbus, Ohio and graduated with a B.A in Environmental Studies from Ithaca College in 2020. Shortly after, he fulfilled his life-long dream of moving to the Pacific Northwest. After a summer as a Wilderness Ranger with the Forest Service in western Washington he moved to Yachats, Oregon and began his year as a RARE service member. During his time at Ithaca College, Sam managed his school’s 560 acre nature preserve and had the opportunity to study sustainable development for a semester in India. Sam loves hiking, backpacking, and all other outdoor recreation and hopes to attend University of Oregon next year for Graduate School.

Does environmental and sustainability planning interest you? Are you looking for a life changing experience in rural Oregon? Learn more about serving with the RARE AmeriCorps Program. Applications for Year 28 (2021-22) due April 23, 2021.