Think Oregon

Portland-based Girls Build teaches construction basics and life lessons written by James Sinks | photo illustration by 1859 Staff; photos from Bigstock For more young girls and in more places, the buzzing saws, whirring drills and empowering vibes are back this summer. A decade ago, Portland carpenter Katie Hughes gathered in her living room with a group of fellow tradeswomen, bowls of homemade soup and a question: What could they do about the next generation of young women and the gender disparity in the building trades? The solution: teach, prepare and empower. With a nudge from those dinner party guests, Girls Build was founded. And at the helm of the new nonprofit was Hughes, who’d previously run a construction-focused girls’ education program. That first summer, in 2016, a group of eighty girls ages 8 to 15 attended the charity’s inaugural summer camp in Portland, where they learned how to safely…

In Curry County, a unique partnership combines an educational nonprofit with water-protector offices written by James Sinks | photography by Curry Watershed Partnership An unconventional collaboration is helping save fish, farmland and money on the South Coast. In each Oregon county, you’ll find at least one soil and water conservation district. Overseen by locally elected boards, the nonregula-tory entities oversee projects to protect irrigation water and the farms that help feed you. In addition, every Oregon county is home to at least one watershed council. Those councils convene scientists, industries, recreationists and others to preserve water quality and revive stream-dependent species, primarily salmon. Yet only in one county will you find a mash-up that corrals together those somewhat obscure but similar efforts, along with a nine-year-old educational charity. Based in Gold Beach, the Curry Watersheds Partnership combines the staff and missions of four sustainability organizations under a single roof. By…

Despite a federal freeze, a Salem nonprofit helps refugees from across the globe find a foothold—and belonging written by James Sinks | illustration by Cate Andrews With signs, smiles and new coats, a festive celebration at Portland International Airport greeted a new Oregon family from far away. That day, a family of four escaping risk in Myanmar walked off a plane and was met by a throng from the nonprofit Salem for Refugees with coats for the cold Oregon winter. Little did anyone suspect, but the January 17 welcoming event—coming on the eve of the inauguration of President Donald Trump—might have been the nonprofit’s last. For a decade, Salem for Refugees has been helping people with legal federal refugee status to get settled, find housing and navigate the path to self-sufficiency in the mid-Willamette Valley. The nonprofit—which also runs Corvallis for Refugees—is one of six official refugee resettlement organizations in…

Nonprofit helps to buoy Newport’s local sea lions—and bayfront commerce written by James Sinks | photography by Visit Newport You can hear them before you see them. Nobody is quite sure what they’re talking about, but pretty much everybody is able to find the source of the ruckus along the historic waterfront in Newport: a lazy scrum of sea lions basking and jockeying for space on dedicated floating platforms just off Port Dock One in Yaquina Bay. The barking fellas are one of the region’s more popular tourist attractions, sometimes drawing hundreds of people hourly to laugh and watch the action and wonder just how big a California sea lion can get (really big, like more than 1,000 pounds). The popular and free-to-visit pinniped posse also translates into customers for nearby businesses and eateries. So when a massive winter storm careened into Newport in late 2022 and tore all of…