Uninsured Clark County children in need of mental health services have gotten support this month from sources as varied as foundation board rooms and local classrooms.
“It feels really good to be helping people,” said Channy Saenz, an 18-year-old senior at Columbia Adventist Academy in Meadow Glade. “They won’t know who it is, they’ll just know that their community cares.”
The entire senior class of Columbia Adventist — nearly 30 kids in all — visited downtown Vancouver on Wednesday morning to pack donated food for The Children’s Center, a nonprofit mental health clinic that serves low-income children and their families. Ninety-five percent of The Children’s Center’s clients live in poverty, according to spokesman Matthew Butte, and so the agency holds a food drive and a toy drive every year in order to send home a little extra sustenance and joy during the holiday season.
The staples that got sorted and packed Wednesday were collected and transported by caring partners including St. Joseph’s Catholic School and numerous local businesses, Butte said. The final staging area for this proto-industrial operation was the Proto-Cathedral of St. James the Greater, which gladly offered up its auditorium space when Butte asked.
“We don’t have a lot of space in our building,” Butte said. When it was founded in 1989 in downtown Vancouver, The Children’s Center saw around 200 clients per year; it now serves 1,600 per year — but it still squeezes into one tight building on West 11th Street, as well as leasing costly additional office space nearby.
That’s why Butte was also happy to announce that The Children’s Center has won a couple of big grants that will help it finish off an ongoing capital campaign and move to a spacious new home in central Vancouver.
The Meyer Memorial Trust has awarded $300,000 and the Firstenburg Foundation has awarded $250,000 toward the completion of a 15,525-square-foot, single-story building on 1.85 undeveloped acres at 13500 S.E. Seventh St. The estimated $6.3 million construction project broke ground in July and is expected to be finished in May 2015. The Children’s Center spent years lining up support from private donors and the state Legislature before launching the project, but there’s still a little way to go yet, Butte said.
“This money will help support some of the most vulnerable children in our community, and that’s the place real change can happen,” said Children’s Center board member Brian Willoughby.
Visit www.thechildrenscenter.org to learn more, including information about the upcoming toy drive.
The Firstenburg Foundation was launched by the late Ed and Mary Firstenburg after Ed bought a rural bank in 1936 and grew it into a major local institution, First Independent. The Firstenburg Foundation has donated millions of dollars to local causes and facilities — like hospitals and community centers — in Clark County.
The Meyer Memorial Trust, based in Portland, was launched by the estate of Fred G. Meyer, the retail store magnate, but the two have not been connected since 1982. It recently made $5.5 million in donations to 74 nonprofit agencies in this region — including $320,000 for two in Southwest Washington. The Children’s Center was one.
North Bank Artists Gallery
The other agency is the North Bank Artists Gallery. The Meyer trust awarded North Bank a $20,000 “grass-roots” grant, aimed at smaller, growing organizations. Executive Director Maureen Andrade said the money will help the gallery continue to do everything it does now. That means paying staff, hosting art shows and artist talks, reaching out to local schools, providing student internships and helping keep up the 100-year-old building it calls home at 1005 Main St.
“This is a large part of our operational cost for 2015,” Andrade said. “It’s a huge accomplishment for our organization to get to the level where you can apply for grants like that.”
The Meyer grant also will help North Bank continue to provide leadership and strategic planning for the downtown arts district that the city declared last spring, Andrade said.
Learn more about North Bank at northbankartistsgallery.com
