Monica Seidl-Connecting Communities and Creating Change

LINKS
Wildlife Center for the North Coast
Coast Pregnancy Clinic
CASA
North Coast Food Web
Altrusa
Lower Columbia College
Hero Saver
Belize Heroes
Silent Bridge


Monica is actively involved in various community initiatives, particularly focused on education, entrepreneurship, and community development. Here's a summary of the key points from the conversation:

1. Business Program at the College:
   • The college has a strong business program with a focus on entrepreneurship and small business development.
   • There is a business club that is open to all students, not just those in business classes.
   • A rotary club has been started to provide students with opportunities to engage in both business and community-oriented activities.
2. Vision for a Business Achievement Center:
   • Monica envisions the creation of a Business Achievement Center to support mentoring and collaboration between students and mentors.
   • Plans include hosting mentors from organizations like SCORE to guide small businesses and providing resources for writing business plans and navigating permits.
   • The center aims to have a recording studio for interviews, infomercials about the college's foundation, and educational content creation.
3. Educational Initiatives:
   • The center would have the capability to record educational content, such as math problems, science experiments, and more, for students to access anytime.
   • Monica emphasizes the importance of using social media platforms like TikTok for educational outreach.
4. International Programs:
   • The college is actively involved in international programs with sister cities in Japan, connections in Korea, and plans for establishing ties with China.
5. Collaboration with Local Nonprofits:
   • Monica works with local nonprofits and government agencies on economic development, small business development, and entrepreneurship.
   • She discusses projects related to addressing childcare gaps and culinary training needs in the community.
6. Partnerships and Networking:
   • Monica shares her experiences of networking and building partnerships, both locally and internationally, to bring resources and support to the community.
7. Philanthropic Work in Belize:
   • Monica is involved in philanthropic work in Belize, including initiatives like providing an ambulance, supporting a medical clinic, and collaborating with various nonprofits for broader impact.
8. Connections with International Nonprofits:
   • Monica has connections with nonprofits like Silent Bridges, which focuses on rescuing victims of child and women trafficking internationally.
9. Community Engagement:
   • Monica emphasizes the importance of community engagement, collaboration, and support for various pro

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Transcript

[00:07] Jan: Are you looking for an inspiring listen? Something to motivate you? You've come to the right place. Welcome to Women of the Northwest, where we have conversations with ordinary women leading extraordinary lives. Motivating, inspiring, compelling. Hey, hey, listeners. I'm your host, Jan Johnson, and I am so glad that you are here joining us. Welcome to episode 80. I just received the stats for this podcast for the 2023 year. And wait till you hear what you've helped accomplished. I'm not going to lie, I think it's pretty cool. We're ranked in the top 50%. Seattle is the most popular city with 266 listeners. Astoria 257, Portland, 182, Seaside 78, Cathlamet, 56. And we have listeners in 28 countries. The US has 2072, Germany, 67. Hey, if you're in Germany, thank you for listening. Or Philippines, 31, Dominican Republic, 23 and Mexico, 22. So all you international people that are listening, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining us. 

The top episodes were, one, Elizabeth Cole, cultivating skills and cross cultural connections. Two, Amanda Rohne, life as a mortician, dairy farmer, scandinavian festival president and Grange event organizer. Number three, Julie Gaetano, adventures overseas and beyond. Number four, Aaron Holty, become a merchant mariner. And five, Sayori de Bruyn, harmonious voices behind the curtains of opera. I'd say that's a pretty cool year and looking forward to even more exciting things next year. So today we'll have the pleasure of listening to Monica Seidel. I interviewed her before in episode 32, where she tells us all about her vision and projects and beliefs, including a library, learning center, a playground, and more. She's a pretty incredible woman and you're sure to enjoy catching up with her. So here we go.

[02:14] Monica: Okay, so, Monica, tell me about your vision here. The college here has a very strong business program, and they're focusing now on entrepreneurships and small business development to help students start looking towards starting their own businesses and what that looks like. And so as they're going through some of their business administration programs, we have looked at how we can help mentor them. They do have a business club, so people can be a part of a business club. They don't have to necessarily be in the business classes to even be part of the business club. We've started a rotary club here as well. And so a lot of those same students are finding the benefit of being in a business club, but also in a civic minded, community type club. And so because we have such a strong Rotary club here in our community, we have a morning that meets at LCC and a noon, one that meets weekly. And so we want, of course, to encourage people to transition into Rotary at some point. So supporting a college group as a know it starts overlapping that business piece of it. And so the business achievement center here that we have started to envision would also help with mentoring and bringing students and mentors into one place in one space. So we're visioning out that on Mondays, we would have somebody from score, which score helps mentor small businesses. On Tuesdays, we could have somebody that helps them write business plans. And where do we go for permitting and just sits. And people could come in and get that, but then also to have a recording studio here. So with the brick walls, it's great for sound.

 And we've kind of created a little conversation seating area that makes it warm and inviting. But then you could really sit and have interviews with faculty that are. Could we have a foundation? LCC foundation. People want to know more about how they get involved or what the foundation does or where the dollars go to. So you could have little infomercials about that and promote LCC. And this room itself has drop down screens, a video recorder up there, so that if a teacher wanted to come in that teaches math classes and be able to do live math problems, but record it, put it on a YouTube channel for LCC. Students that are taking algebra would then have access at any time to go see some of the problems, practice problems, and it's always available for whatever there. Chemistry, you name it, you could use that. And then with the idea that social media and recordings and, I mean, everybody does TikTok videos now, and so TikTok seems to be a way to go. But even 32nd commercials. Right. You could create this space to do 32nd jingles that the radio stations could even play.

[05:25] Jan: That is awesome.

[05:27] Monica: What a vision. Yeah. And LCC doesn't have a radio station. They don't have a media station. They don't have any of. So, you know, what a great way to keep people informed and connected.

[05:39] Jan: Well, even to set it up as maybe an adjunct class.

[05:45] Monica: Yes. And show that they can do that type of recordings and those types. LCC is really coming on strong, too, with their international programs. We have sister cities in Japan, and we have quite a few students that come from that. We now have a Korea connection, and we're establishing a connection with China. So Chris Bailey, who's retiring at the end of the month, actually for just a couple of weeks, he's really, in the last ten years, really brought the international program forward. So why not have commercials that advertise that, promote that, get the word out, because it's always about communicating and overly communicating, and people always say, oh, I didn't know there was anything to do in Longview. We hear that all the time. There's nothing to do in Longview. Well, maybe not if you don't know about it. Right. So spreading the word and like you said, maybe teaching a class on how to do. Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant.

[06:44] Jan: And tell me again, what's your connection with the college and how did you.

[06:48] Monica: Get started with this idea? It's amazing because with the work that I do now with Cowlitz-Wakaiakum council of government, which is a mouthful, but they're a planning agency for the county and so their focus is to get federal and state dollars into local. So when I started with them a year and a half ago, it was on something completely different with transportation and broadband. And then we started having meetings here at LCC about broadband and about business. And they also focus on economic development. Well, for me, economic development, being a previous banker, and all those businesses that I had helped along the way, it just seemed to be seamless. So the faculty here, Mark Gaither, who is the advisor for the business department, he has just done a great job just coming alongside and we just bounce ideas off of each other. 

So he had the space, he had the curriculum and the classes. And so we just keep talking about how we can build this out and truly be visionaries of where this goes. And with me working for a council of government that focus on economic development, small business development, entrepreneurship, how do you get businesses up and running? How do you get them sustained? How do you get people into business? Because it is harder for people to start a business. And marketing. And marketing, yes. So I started coming over here, and my rotary classes meet here on Tuesdays. So then I would just come over here and meet with Mark after that. So we started doing some real strong strategizing as how we could move this program. So with me writing grants through the government to be able to get small business administration to give us grants to help some of the projects, the next two major ones, if I get awarded, I'll know by the end of this month, but I applied for one, and it will focus on childcare gaps and needs in our community, how we can turn, like even churches that only run on Wednesday nights and Sundays, they've got a nursery, they've got a space there in my preschool. And you've got a lot of retired teachers, you've got a lot of people that maybe just for a couple of hours a day in the afternoon, they could even have an after-school program.

 So starting to look really at how is that going to be creative in our community. We have, what, six mills in our town that run rotating shifts 24 hours a day. Not one daycare. Not one daycare that serves that type of a community. No overnights, no nothing. And so what a disconnect, especially single parents.

[09:39] Jan: Exactly what are they doing?

[09:41] Monica: And they're struggling. And you start seeing more and more that women that even had the opportunity to go back to work, sometimes they can't if they have nobody to take care of their child. And so some of them have actually found space, like in head start. LCC has a head start program, and so they have really head start kind of branches out from. So we've got locations all over Cowlitz county. But looking at some of the women that used head start to start taking care of their kids also got absorbed into it to start working at it, because they couldn't find any other employment that was flexible in that way. 

And then the other one is culinary. So many of the businesses in town said, we need to be able to hire people to work in our restaurants, and we can't find them. And if they come in off the street, they don't have kitchen skills and knife skills, and we don't want them to lose a finger on the first week of the job. And so we used to have a nonprofit called grounds for opportunity that was almost like a training kitchen. And they still do meals on wheels, 1400 meals a week. They send out the kitchen, but they had a front end restaurant that they used to train people that were coming out of incarceration, that were just entering the workforce, coming out of. And she had an 80% success rate placing those people. That is awesome. And they closed during COVID who was heading that up cap. So Lower Columbia Cap, which is for our low income, they own. That's brilliant. The business. And so they had a great training center to train hostesses, kitchen staff, wait staff, all of that. And we lost that asset during COVID So trying to get that back. Trying to get. Let's just use the college, maybe. And now we're going to actually use Longview parks and rec. They're a little bit easier to do a four-week course of culinary. We have a commercial kitchen called gifted kitchen, and she's willing to use the space. She was doing cooking classes before, but now these cooking classes will be on purpose, training the next generation. And then maybe after that, a month later, we would do soup starters and appetizers and do a whole course and have the restaurants around here even send some of their employees that want that next. So just getting that whole culinary circle started again, that's brilliant. 

Kelso Junior High and high school have culinary classes. After those kids graduate high school, they don't have any place to go on to. Also, they need to have projects. So we're looking at using the high school students to do prepping for the meals for wills grounds for opportunity location. So they can prep the stuff, bring it over to the location right there in Kelso, and they can actually fix up some of the foods as grab and go foods as well for keto restricted, diabetic restricted, because they have to have special dietary needs for a lot of these meals on wheels people. So why not bring it to that next level where people in the community could even stop and pick up $10 grab and go reheat later? And there's not as much waste because they're frozen, but they're fresh frozen tv dinners in essence. Right. 

So working on that project with lower Columbia Cap because they got a grant to do some of that specialty food service, but they don't have enough staff to do it. So using the students at Kelso, they're in a learning situation and learning an environment. They've got to practice on something. Where does all that food go that they're practicing on? And so putting those connections together and really building it out to go, okay, this could really use the school level, use the college level, use the enter into the workforce level and create something. Meld them all together. Yes, exactly. Your community is lucky to have you. I love this. This gets me so excited, too.

[14:14] Jan: Like, your brain's like popcorn.

[14:15] Monica: Yes. And then we could do this. We could do this. Yes. The ethnic support council here in town that helps with our Hispanic community and all our ethnic, we have about 13% ethnicity besides the white Caucasian, and we have Vietnamese. It's like three or 4% with Vietnamese and Korean, and then the Hispanic community, and then we.

[14:40] Jan: So, Monica, tell me about some of your local nonprofits that you think are amazing.

[14:46] Monica: So there is. There's a lot here in Longview council area, we do have the 100 women who care. And I'm also involved with Altrusa. Our Altrusa club focuses on literacy a lot of times locally. And we do backpack buddies where we fill the food for the kids to take home. They're actually the ones that were my first umbrella for the Belize blessings projects. Okay. I didn't want to have to start my own nonprofit to just do something that I didn't know how long I was going to be involved with it. That was just going to be the library that we were going to open. And so being a part of Altrusa allowed me to be able to do those types of things. 

And then we actually came up with a whole vision and mission statement for Belize Blessings through that project. Because, you know, I don't want to just do the library. It's up and running. But our little community needed education and health and safety. And when you've got a three-legged stool like that, you've got a stronger community right now that the library runs six days a week. We bought the ambulance in February from donations through Kiwanis and rotaries and those types of. And that was kind of a miraculous way that all fell together. It really was. I mean, the fact that I just made the commitment Christmas week last year, exactly one year ago, and said the village chairman and the area representative strongly said that they really need an ambulance. And I think that should be the next focus because my husband, who keeps me grounded, said, you have too many projects. Just focus on one thing. And it became the ambulance. 

And so once I made that commitment, within 2 hours of calling Belize and telling them that when I went to work, my coworker said, my husband's station is selling an Ambulance. Here it is for $10,000. Go talk to him. Which is amazing, honestly. In 2 hour’s time, it went from an idea. And once you put the fleece out there and once you absolutely say, this is what I'm going for, and this is what God has put on my heart, and everything fell in place in 2 hours. That's when God, here you go. And, oh, by the way, did you want us to drop the price? And, oh, by the way, can we make a payment plan for three months? Because I told them, I don't have the money today, but I'll have it in the next three months. We had it in half of that time. We had it in less than six weeks, fully paid for. And that doesn't happen unless God steps in. Exactly. And opens those doors. And on my way home that day, I had called my husband and said, honey, guess what we're buying for Christmas? He said, what? This is an ambulance. He goes, you got to be kidding me. Wait, it's my wife. You're not kidding, are you? No, I'm not. But through that journey, I have found a local nonprofit called Hero Saver, and his name is Charles Jones. He worked as a fireman in Castle Rock. He lives here in Longview locally, but now he works up out of an Olympia fire station, and he collects old firefighting equipment, and he pallets them, and then he takes them personally to Mexico and to other third world countries. It's just him and about, like, four other guys, people that really have just pulled together. And so they have a website, they have a nonprofit. They're a 501c-3. He actually lives four blocks over from where we live because during this process, when I got online and started looking for other nonprofits and then said, wow, oh, my gosh, you do this. Okay? And he said, well, when I'm getting donated items from these fire stations, sometimes they're an EMT location as well. And he goes, I don't do anything with the medical side of it. I know firefighting. I know fire equipment, and you can have all of my medical equipment. And I went, are you kidding me? Here you go. So I still have not met him in person. Oh, I've talked to him on the phone. My husband's met him in person because he's dropped off a whole bunch of stuff with us.

 The pediatrician from child adolescent clinic that went on our voluncation trip that I hosted, she's met him, and she met up with him and got a whole bunch of equipment that we loaded into the ambulance. It's going to be like the family reunion of a family member you just found. Yeah, once I finally get to meet him. And so we're trying in the next few weeks to actually meet up, but four blocks from me. Wow. And I didn't even know he was there. And so now being able to overlap and help, and then I found a nonprofit out of Olympia, and they're called impact Northwest, and they traveled to Ukraine, and they've set up a beacon 911 service in Belize, but it's nine 90. That's the number they use down there. But they're a nonprofit, and a lot of those guys are from either fema or from other walks of life where they've done different trips to help with disasters. They're a nonprofit as well. And when I found them in the connection with Belize, I didn't have a chance to meet them in the US. I met them in Belize. I'm like, how do we live an hour from each other in the US? Longview to Olympia, and we have to go all the way to Belize. 

But I had the connections in Belize of my area representatives. My have, because I live there, and I'm a connector. I have all of these connections. And that's what they needed because they were doing community assessments, disaster relief assessments of, we think this is what's gaps and missing and needed. And this is the type of training. So they went down there and they were training the fire service rescues. They were showing them how to do, like, if there's raining and hurricane and mass flooding, this is how you do rescues. And so they have went back and forth, but setting up that beacon service, we now have a emergency service in Belize that they've never had before. Wow. And I just went, wow. Okay, well, then here's the next step forward. I'm trying to build out the medical clinic that's already there, but make it more of a better functioning and more robust because even though it's a remote medical clinic, they don't have a doctor at it because 12 miles away is the hospital. They want to be able to serve from the hospital, and they just don't have enough doctors in the country to run an additional medical clinic. And so now I'm working with them, trying to see how we can even do telemedicine and telehealth and maybe have just a doctor rotate up two days a week and then have the connections with some of the doctors that are coming to do volunteer work, that if they build this relationship with them, they could even phone a friend and tele-met a doctor about what's. I haven't seen this before. What do you think about this? And reach out and have that connection with said, you know, I got the ambulance down. Is this is a success. 

But now I have an optometrist in town, Terry Tack. He, his son Jeff has an optometry business. He has dad's business, and he's from rotary. As to Terry's gotten older and has some health issues. They had to close the secondary office in Wakaiakum county. They have an entire office of optometry equipment willing to donate to me the optometry chair, all of this to go down to our medical clinic and actually build one of the exam rooms into an optometry room. Oh, my gosh. And I said, I'll take it. And he said, you just got to figure out how to get it there and you can have it. Well, I just had practice getting an ambulance down there. I might be able to figure this out. I was like, okay, I got the ambulance down there. 

Well, now here comes Belize heroes. That is in the US nonprofit 501 C three. That this gentleman that was Belizeian moved up to Virginia east coast 2025 years ago. But he's still helping with his country, training firefighters, training paramedics and EMT, and he's been going back and forth. He has gotten the air force to fly ambulances and fire trucks from the east coast to Belize. And it's some previous senator's name that this program is under, and it's his namesake, but they're still doing it. Twice a year, the air force flies into Belize, no cost to the nonprofits. And I went, okay, now I have another connection to another nonprofit, and he's on the other end going, wait till I tell you about this gal in Washington that I just. And so I'm like, okay, now I got optometry equipment. 

I've got a fireman that wants to give me the medical stuff. I've got this happening, and then I'm like, okay, so what do you guys need for help? And they're like, some of it is funding. We've got these projects we want to do, but we don't always have the funding. And I'm like, okay, well, let's look at maybe writing a larger rotary grant because we can do a global grant. There's two rotary clubs in Belize really close to where we live, and they have a rotate. They have a college group that's very active. So then we start getting the college involved. We start getting the students from here to connect with the students down there, and maybe someday set up an exchange program. And so my next trip in May, I'll be going down in April. But the team, the voluncation. And so this is for you as well. The voluncation team should be coming down May 4, so may the fourth be with you. Okay. It's also my five-year wedding anniversary, but we're going to focus on the police. And I promised my husband I would not work on any projects until January 1 because I had to get through Christmas. I came home three days before Thanksgiving, and I said, I'll celebrate the holidays with you. I won't work on any of my pet projects until January or any new ones, right? Or any new ones.

 And then all of a sudden, two days after I was home, I'm in Kalama at the chamber of Commerce luncheon. And so for work, and I'm in the room with a whole bunch of people from Kalama, and there was a couple police officers there because they were going to help with the parade for the holiday parade. And I said, you know, your Kalama ambulance is in Belize, and it's going to be saving lives and doing all that. And they're like, oh, that is amazing. And I said, my next trip is going to be focusing on reopening a satellite police station in our community. It's there, but it is rat bat crap infested. We're just going to clean it up like we did the library. Done it once. I can do it again.

 But it's going to be a police station. And any police officers that want to go on the next trip and somebody like, oh, that's great. Well, Mark Wilson from the port walked up and he goes, Monica, that gentleman right outside in the lobby did not hear what you were just talking about. And he trains police officers internationally. Go take your business card and go out in the lobby and talk to him right now. And I'm like, okay. So I take my little police blessings business card. I run out of the lobby and I introduce myself, and I'm like, oh, so Mark told me to talk to you. And I used his name, and this is what. And so my next trip is going to be this. And I'm so excited about all of this. And he goes, well, that's wonderful. He goes, I just got back from the Ukraine. He goes, actually, I have my own nonprofit, and yes, I do a lot of internationally training with police officers and stuff. He goes, but I actually do rescues. And I said, rescues? He goes, child and women trafficking rescue. And I said, excuse me. And he goes, it's called Silent Bridges. It's a 501 C nonprofit. I'm in Kalama talking to a man that just got back from rescuing. He goes, you know that movie the Sound of Freedom? I'm like, yeah. And he goes, that's not me, but my silent bridges is very similar. He goes, we have four safe houses set up internationally. I'm opening another safe house in Bogota, Columbia, but we do child and women trafficking rescues. The guy that I met is from Kalama, and he uses a different name so that it's protected and private. But at the same time, what an amazing story to know that somebody right here in Kalama has a nonprofit that people can donate to and participate with. And you can go out on the website to Silent Bridges. And it's right there, and there's live podcasts of him recording because people have interviewed him.

 But at the same time, I thought I knew a lot of people in our community. And it just surprises me every time that I hear another nonprofit hero saver with Charles Jones. I'd never heard of him. Impact northwest, that does all of the disaster reliefs and goes internationally, and they take volunteers and they do these things and they've created the Beacon service in Belize for having a beacon service is really like a 911 service. When you start talking to all of the nonprofits, you don't want to compete with them. You just want to help connect them and help say, okay, this is what I'm working on, what you've got. How can we help you? How can we support you? Sometimes it's money, but sometimes it's also resources, and sometimes it's connections and knowing different officials. For me, it's trying to get the supplies, sometimes to Belize. Okay, well, Belize heroes is a nonprofit, again, from the United States that does those types of things, helping EMTs and paramedics and training and so just finding all of those different resources that are available and connecting Khaled's spotlights. It's a website now where you can do your business, but at least it's getting the spotlight out of it. It's getting the notice because people don't know what they don't know and even.

[29:53] Jan: Just the knowledge of it being there. But $25, maybe your $25 is just.

[30:00] Monica: What they need right there.

[30:00] Jan: And that's every little bit is more than they had.

[30:05] Monica: Whatever you can do to help out with. I agree. Every little bit counts. And it is amazing how just those little pieces, when we do the 100 women who care, and I don't know if you do the same thing in Klotsop county. When we do it, we're asking nonprofits to bring their materials and their literature to share what they do. Because sometimes, even if they're not the ones that win the money, they can connect with somebody else in the room that night that is collecting coats or shoes or some other types of. One of ours just needed a location to store their. Yeah, there's all kinds of different ways to get involved and to help, and it's not always right. Right. Okay.

[30:47] Jan: Well, Monica, thank you.

[30:48] Monica: Thank you for sharing your updates with us. And this will be fun, and we'll.

[30:54] Jan: Put all those information in the show.

[30:56] Monica: So.

[30:57] Jan: And maybe a year from now, we'll talk again.

[31:00] Monica: Again and again. Right? The gift that keeps giving. Yes. All right.

[31:08] Jan: Monica is amazing. Right? I love her energy and vision. If she mentions something you have expertise in or would like to help out, Belizeable links are in the show notes. I'm hoping to go on her trip to Belize in May. Maybe you'd like to join me. She mentioned some local nonprofits. Since it's the end of the year, you might be thinking you'd like to donate to some nonprofits to take advantage of tax write-offs. We'll hear from a few others as well. As you know, I am our local founder of 100 women who care where we showcase three local nonprofits each quarter. Here are a few that we featured over the last year and a half and links will be in the show notes to these for any of them that may make your heart sing. I have Trudy Brawley here from Coast Pregnancy clinic. Hi truth Trudy. Hello. Tell us about coast pregnancy clinic. What do you do here?

[32:05] Trudy Brawley: I am the executive director here at Coast Pregnancy Clinic. Coast Pregnancy Clinic is a pregnancy clinic that is providing free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, parenting classes, material aid to women and families in our area.

[32:29] Jan: What type of material aid? What does that mean?

[32:33] Trudy Brawley: We can provide diapers, baby wipes, clothing up to about two t. We have furniture, we have hygiene products. We also can provide maternity clothes for free. We have baby formula that we always.

[32:55] Monica: Give out for free also.

[32:59] Jan: And you do some classes too, right?

[33:01] Monica: We do.

[33:02] Trudy Brawley: We call those earn while you learn program or our bright course classes. Those are classes that they can watch anything from conception, taking care of mother during pregnancy. After pregnancy. There's 1st, 2nd, 3rd trimester and then they break it up after birth into newborns, toddlers and it moves up through there. There's also life skills classes that they can do.

[33:34] Jan: And are fathers able to take these classes too?

[33:38] Trudy Brawley: Yes, they are. We have just recently in the last year started a fatherhood program. We have gentlemen here that are willing to not willing to. They want to meet with these men and they want to encourage them and support them and offer practical advice to becoming the best dad that they can be. We would love prayer. That's the most important thing. Come in and learn about us. We give tours to the clinic so that you can really see what we're doing.

[34:16] Jan: And volunteers. Do you need volunteers?

[34:18] Trudy Brawley: We could always take volunteers. So then I'd love to just meet, sit down and talk with you, really give you an idea of what we're doing so that you can really determine if this is the place for you.

[34:33] Jan: Here's an update from Wildlife center of the north coast. This is taken from their newsletter that came in my email. Here's another inspiring release story. We recently released the last of our 2023 myrrh jumpling and juvenile patients. Most were admitted in August as jumplings, which is similar to fledglings, but they don't fly yet. They jump down to the water from their cliff nesting spot and the male parent teaches them how to forge for fish. WCNC received a lot ten MER intakes in one day on August 18 of jumplings and juveniles between July and October. In past years we have seen a higher rate of mortality, but this year we had 19 jumplings survive to release. It was a lot for our pools to handle. Mers were housed inside together until they were stable, self feeding, treated for parasites, and waterproof. They were moved to outdoor pools after that to live on water full time. Mers were fed herring and were encouraged to engage in natural behaviors by diving for their fish, as well as social behaviors such as aloperening criteria for release. Birds must be waterproof, self feeding, diving and in good body condition. The Mers were released in two groups. Bar pilots of Warrington released ten from their boat in October. WCNC staff released the rest from a boat in early December. We want to also mention a genuine thank you to all of our volunteers, staff and supporters who help make this happen. If you're interested in helping at the WCNC, whether that's volunteering, sitting on the board, or making a donation, your support matters. Thank you for your continued support. Okay, so I'm including links in the show notes, so for any of these nonprofits that you might be interested in, you can go to their website and make donations. I'm sure they'd appreciate any amount just to keep them going. And here's an update from North Coast Food web, which is located in Astoria. So they have a kitchen and storage manager, Andy Catalano, who brought handwritten versions of two maps to their board meeting to explain why storage and transportation are such key parts of our programs. I'll give a link to looking at those maps because it is pretty interesting. The before is pretty befuddled. The after is pretty direct. Each number of those graphs is a food producer, one who used to spend a lot more time than they do now, driving their food around, burning fossil fuels, money and precious time that is much better spent farming, ranching, baking, and any other good thing. Now, Brenda vassal from low tide farms, for instance, can deliver her pork to us only once a month instead of once a week, saving a two hour round trip. We then distribute those foods that have been stored with us through our own online farmers market to food routes down in Tillamuk, to the Klaskanai food Hub and other outlets. Multiply that time and logistics savings by the ten producers represented in Andy's maps, and we have an impactful new program featuring shelving a very large walk in freezer and a little paperwork. Storage doesn't sound very sexy, but the definition of a food hub is all about food aggregation and distribution. We are only a hub because we can gather food together, safely stored until you are ready to have those amazing pork chops for dinner. Because that story is central as the truck drives, if not as the crow flies, to our three county hub network and CFW has become the waste station bonus, we are also lowering the carbon footprint of our local food system in addition to de stressing the lives of producers and staff members alike. So let me tell you about CASA. CASA stands for Clatsop Court appointed special advocates. They train community volunteers to stand up for abused and neglected children. Their advocacy helps ensure that these children have the best possible chance for a safer, more secure home life. What they do investigate all relevant information about the child. Casas carry out an objective, systematic examination of the situation, including history, environment, relationships and needs of the child facilitate by identifying resources and services for the child, encouraging a collaborative relationship between all parties involved in the case and helping to create a comprehensive plan by which the child's needs can be met. Advocate for the child by ensuring that all the facts pertaining to the child are understood, articulated and brought to the attention of the court. Monitor the case to ensure that all parties fulfill their responsibilities to the child in a timely fashion and comply with the court's orders. Casas stay with the case from beginning to end and work to ensure that children don't get lost in the system. Casas are a diverse group of welltrained community volunteers who are appointed by the juvenile court to represent the best interests of children involved in the child welfare system. CAsA volunteers have been serving abused and neglected children in Clatsup county since 1992. CasA volunteers advocate for between 91 hundred children and they have a list of children who are waiting for a CasA volunteer. Casas also help to focus community attention on local issues of child abuse and neglect. They also have an opening for a program manager. Send your resume to casa@clatsupcasa.org.

[40:19] Monica: If you.

[40:19] Jan: Enjoyed this or any other of my podcast episodes, it would be amazing if you would take a few minutes to leave a review so others can find it. Transcripts are available on my website@janjohnson.com please join me again next week.