Updates from Looking Glass
The annual Looking Glass All-Staff Lunch & Awards gathering took place on Wednesday, May 15th at LCC with CEO Craig Opperman sharing organization updates and discussed the constantly changing landscape of youth and family services in Lane County and Oregon. The annual meeting begins with a touching appreciation of the length of employment of various program staff members, with the longest tenured staff standing and receiving heartfelt applause. Several awards were handed out as well.
Only 9% of sex traffickers who target youth (individuals who exploit youth by forcing them to engage in sexual acts in exchange for money, housing or other compensation) are strangers to those being trafficked. Over 90% of the time, the youth are being exploited by someone they know, and over 60% of the time, it is a family member or romantic partner. This sad statistic comes from Looking Glass’s dedicated Survivor Advocate (SA) staff member in a recent discussion about the challenges youth in Lane County face in the realm of sex trafficking. We won’t be using her name or photo in this article since her anonymity is important for a variety of reasons.
For national Thank a Youth Worker Day, Franz Bakery generously donated over 100 boxes of donuts to Looking Glass’ over 250 staffers. Thank you to Franz and all our hard working staff for helping youth in our community.
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.
The 2019 “Looking Forward, Giving Back” auction fundraiser for Looking Glass was a huge success - everyone walked away from this table a winner. The Vegas Nights themed event was well received by 250+ attendees and the funds generated by this extremely benevolent crowd of supporters will help our youth clients and programs greatly. Among many special features during the evening, Jeanne Staton was honored with the “Guiding Light” award for her years of service and support for Looking Glass.
