Updates from Looking Glass
The 2019 Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures breakfast fundraiser for Looking Glass, held on Tuesday November 12th at Venue 252, highlighted the magnitude of programs and services Looking Glass offers while showcasing the variety of education programs offered and from keynote speaker LaMonte Morgan focusing the effort of the community to invest in youth as preventative work.
On a chilly fall Eugene day in early October, New Roads Runaway & Homeless Youth Services Manager James Ewell posed for a photo opp taken by a Register-Guard reporter showing a sad and mostly empty bin of socks at the New Roads clothing closet which showed the current supply of socks offered to youth being at about 10 or so pairs. By the end of “Socktoberfest” the first ever month-long coordinated sock donation drive for Looking Glass, the challenge became finding storage for all the newly received socks - more than 7,000 pairs of socks were donated and they’re still coming in.
The 2nd annual Looking Glass Paddle Battle ping pong (or table tennis, if you take it seriously) tournament held Saturday, Sept 28th at the YMCA in Eugene was a huge success, raising north of $5,000 for Looking Glass programs and providing 50 participants the opportunity to help at-risk youth while having a lot of fun. In addition to trophies for each bracket winner (singles, doubles in both pro and amateur levels), raffle prizes were awarded and yummy grilled cheese sandwiches sustained the group throughout the day thanks to the Franz Grilled Cheese Machine.
Members of Looking Glass staff and their family and friends volunteered to staff an ice cream booth, generously donated by Stepping Stone Program Supervisor Scott Wilson and his family, at this year’s Oktoberfest event in Mt. Angel. The event only allows non-profits to run the food booths and Scott’s family arranged for some German-themed modifications to be made on their booth as well as towing it up there and supplying the inventory at wholesale cost. The four day event (which draws annual crowds of over 300,000 people to the 3,500 person town) generated more than $11,000 for Looking Glass!
A group of supporters, staff and board members gathered at Hop Valley in Eugene on Tuesday to thank Amy and Alex Haugland and recognize the impact of their help facilitating a $50,000 donation from Alex’s father’s Oregon Community Foundation fund. The Haugland’s offered these funds from the Richard P. Haugland Fund as a way to challenge other local donors to step up and try and raise $100,000 in total. Over the course of about 8 weeks, Looking Glass received donations large and small from roughly 85 individual donors and the full match was achieved!
A gathering of Looking Glass counseling clients and family members enjoyed a casual evening of fun, food and prizes at the Eugene Science Center on Tuesday, June 25th. The Intensive Outpatient Support Services counseling group (IOSS) is a strength-based, team oriented, and community involved approach focused on making positive changes in a child’s individual and family functioning level. The family fun nights, a new initiative, are offered quarterly and aim to allow the youth and families an opportunity to enjoy a relaxing and fun environment in a safe and stimulating venue.
On Saturday, June 1st a group of Looking Glass supporters joined with a few staff members for a great bike ride together. This fundraiser helped raise over $2,500 towards our $50,000 Haugland Match Challenge Campaign.
Employees from Eugene’s Levi Strauss office spent several hours at two Looking Glass locations as part of their Community Day of volunteering around the Eugene/Springfield area. Levi’s staff members helped improve landscaping at Station 7 and re-painted the interior waiting room at our Counseling annex offices on West 11th.
The Richard P. Haugland Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation has offered Looking Glass an extremely generous matching donation offer - all donations made to Looking Glass from now through June 25, 2019 will be match 1-to-1 by the Haugland Fund - up to $50,000! Any new donors or returning donors (those who have not donated for 12 months or more) will generate a 2-to-1 match from this fund.
Looking Glass Community Services was selected for inclusion in Umpqua Bank’s new Power Partner Program which was designed to establish strategic partnerships with strong nonprofits in key markets throughout the bank’s footprint in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Nevada. In addition to the $12,500 check donated by Umpqua, Looking Glass has the opportunity to receive high-level engagement opportunities with Umpqua Bank associate leaders.
On Thursday, April 11th Looking Glass staff and supporters joined other thankful groups in acknowledging and celebrating the wonderful volunteer work being done at organizations around the county. Looking Glass was honored to have had two separate volunteers to celebrate with at the United Way Volunteer of the Year Celebration at Valley River Inn. New Roads instructor Steve Nastasiuk and two representatives from the Kappa Delta Alpha Lambda sorority were both nominated in their respective categories.
