Edmonds and Lynnwood partner to build Tiny House

The Rotary Club of Edmonds joined with The Rotary Club of Lynnwood to work on a Tiny House Project on a very cold Saturday morning last week. Members of both clubs met at the warehouse in Seattle and were met by the enthusiastic and knowledgeable crew who put them right to work. No training or experience needed, just a desire to help be a part of the solution to the houseless crisis in our area.

The Tiny House Project is a Non-Profit 501(c)(3) Corporation that builds emergency tiny house shelters for the houseless. While people who are houseless wait for affordable housing to be built, allowing them to wait in the gutter, especially without basic needs for human survival, is wrong and inhumane.

Tiny House communities provide temporary shelters with all necessary amenities for human and societal needs (e.g. bathrooms, showers, laundry, kitchen, community center, gardens, etc.) They provide a stable location for outreach teams and case managers to find their clients when needed to continue their services as well, and connect residents with new services that require a stable location.

Their mission is to bring people together and provide warm and safe emergency shelters for people who need shelter and provide a safe environment for them to get services and programs while they wait for affordable housing to be built. We MUST do better as a whole society if we want to survive and grow.

Additional photos in the "read more" section below ....
 

Bridge to Success - realized

Bridge to Success Project - Realized

What a long strange trip this has been. Four eager and committed Rotary Club of Edmonds members left Seattle in February 2019, bound for The Gambia. Thanks to a District 5030 Discovery Grant, Lamin Manneh, Maggie Peterson, Beth Kealy and Randy Hutchins were able to spend 10 days scouting for a site to build a 3-classroom science laboratory in the Central River Region, the most rural and underserved population in Gambia.

Upon our return, we were working as most clubs do when building support for projects: visiting Rotary Clubs and making our presentation while seeking support and attending the quarterly International Service Committee Meetings on Mercer Island. Then COVID hit, and everything came to a screeching halt. We literally had no idea when and how we would get this done. And then, thanks to an introduction from members of our partner club in Gambia, Brusubi/ Serrekunda, an angel donor appeared. MRC Holland, based in The Netherlands, has worked on various education projects in The Gambia for years, and after Lamin flew to Gambia in December 2021 and met with their representative, they were so impressed with our work that they agreed to build a brand new, three classroom/2 teacher apartment building at Kaur.

Our Global Grant was approved in October of 2021, and as soon as the construction of the building by MRC Holland was done, our approved vendor was contacted and supplies were ordered.

We are so incredibly proud and happy to announce that in September of 2022, students began attending classes in the Science Labs at Kaur Senior Secondary School, an opportunity that had been denied to so many.

We are now developing Phase two of the project: Supplying and implementing the labs at a dual- purpose site in Basse, which will not only be open to students, but will also be used by Gambia College as a preparatory school for new teachers, a critical need in rural Gambia. More on that phase of Bridge to Success to come.

For more information contact Maggie Peterson at Mag2Teach@comcast.net, or Lamin Manneh at Laminm@johnlscott.com

Mika's Playground Update

Since March of 2020, the Edmonds Rotary Club has been raising funds for an all-inclusive playground at the newly renovated Civic Park. 

Mika’s Playground is the city’s first truly inclusive playground, allowing children of all abilities to be able to play together. Former Edmonds Rotary member and President David Kaufer, who oversaw the playground’s fundraising efforts, said the club has received support from the 21st District legislative delegation — Reps. Lillian Ortiz-Self and Strom Peterson and Sen. Marko Liias — to support a $250,000 appropriation in the state’s capital budget.

The push for state funding was initiated by Alison Alfonzo Pence, who serves as the Edmonds Rotary Club’s large grant chair and current Vice President. Pence said she recently retired from her job as executive director for a Seattle food bank, where she wrote many grants, and prior to that had worked in Olympia, so she was familiar with the legislative process.

She made her first funding request to the Legislature in 2020, just prior to the COVID pandemic, “but everything came to a standstill,” she said. As lawmakers began gearing up last for the 2021 legislative session, she renewed her efforts, putting in a request for $250,000.

Alison and David joined other project managers and developers for a "hard hat" tour of the progress - and we are all anxiously awaiting the ribbon cutting scheduled for June 2023.

Great Rotary/City/State partnership!!

Scholarships Offered to Local Seniors