Seattle, WA. Located near Magnolia, Plus One Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the community for children, adults, and in-between for those afflicted by neurological disorders and diseases. Plus One Foundation provides a multitude of resources, “We fund activities and experiences that offer education, rehabilitation, and training such as; art and music therapy, therapeutic horseback riding, integrated movement therapy, martial arts, meditation, yoga, and aquatic therapies.”
The nonprofit is also responding to Covid-19. “At Plus One, we acknowledge the severity of the virus. We are offering additional support and resources to those impacted. We encourage that every individual mask up, practice social distance, washes their hands, and gets vaccinated. From research, we’ve learned neurological disorders develop from COVID-19 as a result of the body’s immune response to the virus.” Plus One offers additional support and resources to COVID-19 survivors. You can find additional information and answers to any questions by emailing [email protected]
Here’s a list of programs the Plus One Foundation offers for people with neurological disorders and diseases:
Plus One offers a variety of grants that you can apply for! These grants can give aid to individuals affected by the long-term neurological effects of COVID-19.
ONE Grant — This is a one-time grant for people with neurological disorders that gives them a chance at a life-changing opportunity with up to $1000.
Occasions Grant — This grants daily or weekly activities, classes, and workshops that add joy and inspiration to these individuals’ lives.
Mermaid Pool Pass — This is a specific grant used to buy three-month, all-access swimming pool passes to the Seattle Public Swimming Pools.
PROGRAMS
Plus One Pals— Offers emotional support through our letters of love written by caring interns and volunteers. These times of uncertainty can be challenging, especially for COVID-19 survivors. Plus One is here to lift some of that fear and isolation through positive, hopeful affirmations.
Fulfillment Package — Offers meal options to those struggling financially from the pandemic.
The organization assists community members by providing “occasion grants” which provide weekly activities and classes for people with neurological disorders, the “ONE grant” which focuses on fulfilling a life-long wish or dream to “expand the experience of living” up to $1000.
Plus One Foundation also offers the “mermaid pool pass” which is a three-month, all-access pool pass for individuals with neurological disorders who want to liven their days with swimming activities at Seattle Public Swimming Pools.
With the volunteers, there is a lot of social outreach for those who may not have heard about these resources before, particularly with their work with Pen Pals. By sending letters of love to individuals who have been feeling lonely and isolated, especially due to the pandemic, by working with this program, Plus One Foundation was able to subset the feelings of desolation by replacing them with thoughtful and handwritten letters for those who need that extra emotional support to lift emotions of uncertainty.
Plus One Foundation showcasing its resources via social outreach.
However, due to the global pandemic, how has Plus One Foundation functioned amidst the crisis at hand? As pictured above, Plus One Foundation mentions, 2020 has been a tumultuous year for all of us, including us here at the Plus One Foundation. In spite of it all, we’ve continued our efforts to brighten people’s lives day by day, giving 200 food packs to the food insecure in Seattle, sending 500+ letters to those feeling isolated in long term residential care facilities, and of course, continuing our grants that provide therapies for our clients with debilitating neurological disorders.” Largely, Plus One Foundation focuses on providing grants, emotional support, and financial food packages filled with shelf-safe food for individuals who have been impacted by the pandemic.
As for events, they are offering a free ukulele class for individuals with neurological conditions with social distancing, masks, and adhering to Covid-19 safe guidelines.
From Plus One Foundation:
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), neurological disorders, ranging from epilepsy to Alzheimer’s disease, Traumatic Brain Injury to Multiple Sclerosis, affect up to one billion people worldwide. They affect people in all countries, irrespective of age, sex, education or income. More than 500 different conditions are considered neurological disorders. We have a lot of work to do.
The Plus One Foundation assists children and adults with a neurological injury, disorder, or disease to achieve goals, expand opportunities and ‘feed the soul’ through activities that offer education, rehabilitation and training. Plus One Foundation is also dedicated to assisting people that have had COVID-19.
We fund classes, workshops and life experiences that are proven to assist individuals on their path of rehabilitation and recovery but are rarely covered by insurance, such as; art and music therapy, therapeutic horseback riding, integrated movement therapy, martial arts, meditation, yoga, and aquatic therapies.
From the foundation: “we hope to educate, inspire, and motivate people by sharing stories of work that is improving lives, from Seattle to South Africa. Through our interactive exhibits, visitors can investigate some of the world’s tough challenges and learn how to act on their own ideas and solutions.” Pictured above is Employee Occupational Health Nurse Katherine Volner, featured by the Discovery Center for serving as an essential worker. Volner is one of five featured stories in the new exhibit.
The new exhibit features five inspiring stories from the fight to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
️Bringing together stories of strength, innovation, and hope from the community in Washington State during the COVID-19 pandemic, this online experience creates a forum for connection, empathy, and healing.
The exhibit highlights people under five main themes:
Fighting and Treating COVID-19
Spreading Joy and Healing
Sharing Critical Information
Meeting the Needs of Communities
Essential Workers Meeting Everyday Needs
Lynda Stuart of the Gates Foundation COVID-19 Response Team shares her story within the interactive exhibit. Stuart discusses rising to the challenge of COVID-19: “Being a global citizen comes with a fascinating insight into the world. One person’s success is everybody’s success; one person’s failure can take us all down. It gives you a pair of eyes on problems that other people don’t necessarily see.”
Lynda Stuart says that watching her father work in health care, she realized “public health and global health were in [her] blood.”
Stuart points out that vaccine work can feel like a thankless task, regardless of how important they are. “If we’re superheroes, then vaccines are our capes. We don’t even know we have them.” Check out this clip of Stuart discussing vaccine demographics, and the inequalities the pandemic has further exposed.
Find out more about Stuart’s contributions here, including how she finds hope in community and spending time with loved ones.
In addition to highlighting those fighting and treating COVID-19 like Stuart, the new exhibition emphasizes the work of spreading joy and healing. Roxana Pardo Garcia describes herself as “a small business owner who is fortunate to be in a place to not only be creative but act on that creativity and to be of service to my community.”
Pardo Garcia recalls being “scared and overwhelmed” by the possibility of the pandemic’s long-lasting effects on the Latinx community. As a disproportionately impacted group, Pardo Garcia voiced concerns about the genetic, emotional memories that would be passed down.
Roxana Pardo Garcia found herself asking: “What is my role in facilitating healing for our communities?”
In response to this call to healing, Pardo Garcia quit her job and started Alimentando al Pueblo, “a different kind of food bank.” The intent was to provide food to people that meets their basic needs, while also ensuring food would be relevant to those receiving it. Pardo Garcia and her family felt that growing up, other food banks would offer items that didn’t get used.
All the vendors Alimentando al Pueblo works with are Latinx- and BIPOC-owned groceries and farms.
To read more about Pardo Garcia’s journey to provide food amidst the pandemic, click here. For more details about the stories mentioned, or to explore other highlights of the exhibit, explore the site.
From The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
Our Role
Where does our foundation fit among the other institutions trying to improve the world?
We typically hear about two sectors, the public and the private. The private sector – business – is good at developing products and services, while the public sector – government – is good at delivering solutions to all the people who need them.
In many cases, the private and public sectors, acting either separately or together, meet people’s needs. But there are gaps, spaces where some people don’t get what they need to live healthy, productive lives.
Here’s an example: A generation ago, the market for vaccines worked well in wealthy countries – if you wanted to be immunized against a whole range of diseases, you could – but the system did not work for other parts of the world. Certain vaccines just weren’t available for most people. The private sector didn’t sell them in low-income countries because it wasn’t clear there would be buyers. Governments tried to step in, but they weren’t in a position to bring all the pieces — the funding, the partnerships, the logistics – together to make it work. Tragically, millions of children were dying of preventable diseases each year.
This is the kind of problem that philanthropies can help solve, and it’s how we define our foundation’s role.
Seattle, WA. One Day Wages is a nonprofit working to fight extreme poverty around the world. Based in Seattle, the organization’s slogan involves looking toward a better future, “One Day.” The nonprofit has international branches and is working to build awareness for issues in underdeveloped areas. It helps poverty-affected communities by providing educational and professional resources and opportunities. It collaborates with other non-profit organizations. Its most recent project is ‘Project #191 Clean and Safe Hands in Nicaragua’ in a partnership with El Porvenir. The goal was to highlight how inaccessible handwashing stations were to rural Nicaraguans. With the help of One Day Wages, they distributed 1,818 handwashing stations with soap to homes, schools, health posts, and health centers in need. This simple but critical intervention cost only $10 per handwashing station, and El Porvenir’s established network in 6 regions of Nicaragua allowed for quick and widespread response. With this third partnership between ODW and El Porvenir, we were able to reach 92,220 people in total with access to handwashing stations.” Ultimately, through their collective impact, 1 Water Point was built, and there was now more accessibility to clean water and sanitation areas to help prevent illness.
One Day Wages is providing awareness for children’s education, children’s health, emergency relief, gender-based violence, girls’ empowerment, global hunger, human trafficking, jobs & skills, maternal health, preventable disease, refugee relief, water & sanitation.
Here’s a video about the organization:
Currently, One Day Wages is holding a 12th annual gala with covid-safety measures by providing 3 opportunities: in-person, limited, and virtual. Their in-person event is in Sodo Park, their limited ‘Party-Style’ is a small gathering in the comfort of your own home with packages that include a party box sent to your address, and a Zoom accessible event with DIY activities.
In response to Covid-19, One Day Wages wrote ” One Day’s Wages has launched an emergency relief fund to respond to the spread of COVID-19 within some of the most vulnerable communities around the world. While the strain from the pandemic is tangible for all of us, we’re coming alongside communities in vulnerable places such as refugee camps, remote villages, and densely populated urban areas where the spread of the virus could have severe impact.” and “Through our partnership with RSKW, 1,800 individuals were provided with relief during the pandemic through direct relief, food support, proper sanitizing kits, masks, and protocols to prevent spread of Covid-19.”
A woman who has received an emergency covid-relief aid.
From One Day Wages:
As a grassroots movement, we are impacting communities and changing lives.
Whether it’s a young girl who no longer has to walk miles to collect water, a mother who can provide for her children thanks to business training, or a school that can now grow nutritious food for their students–our impact is far reaching–community focused–and always sustainable. But we aren’t just about granting money toward issues of poverty, we also want to inspire people to care about justice, and to take action through simple generosity. Because together, we truly believe we can alleviate extreme global poverty in our lifetime.
Seattle, WA. The Northwest Screenwriters Guild is a nonprofit organization aiding in further developing a screenwriter’s career by providing mentor support from the industry and show-business professionals, educational programs, and screenwriting events. Its mission statement is to, “promote professional screenwriting as a career across a broad range of ages, ethnic and gender identities, and experience levels in the Pacific Northwest.” They also hope to modernize old, traditional rules that dominated the falling industry of screenwriting.
Screenwriters from the organization reading aloud their perspective works.
Governed by a board of directors, with experience detailing screenwriting certifications to published authors or academic publications in healthcare, the Northwest Screenwriters Guild aims to advance the careers of screenwriting professionals and beginners to publish their developing stories and scripts to be on the big screen, such as for film or television, and other media, by helping them pitch to industry pros. Many compendium members have had their scripts developed onto the screen with hired actors for film festivals and submissions for awards in contests.
Screenwriters of the Northwest Screenwriters Guild rehearsing for their screenplays while adhering to a reading schedule.
When the scripts for screenplays are finished or drafted by compendium members, before they are submitted to film festivals or industry professionals for a chance to have live stage or on-screen performances, there are chances to further improve and receive critique on their screenplays. Due to the global pandemic, their services and events have shifted to a completely online remote environment, where on Tuesdays they promote a free “Weekly Scene Analysis Workshop” from 6:30-8:30 PM that aims to “assist fellow screenwriters hone the craft of writing scenes—both action and dialogue—that are cinematic, engaging and correctly formatted.” Fellow professional screenwriters or beginners in the industry are to bring a 10-page draft of their screenplay for this particular workshop. They also have an upcoming event for current members on Thursday, July 22nd about the importance of entertainment law for the screenwriting profession. However, to attend the NwSG events and most partner events, individuals must pay a membership fee of $60, but they do get eligibility to be a compendium member and have an exclusive chance of pitch sessions with professional screenwriters or industry professionals.
Actors and performers from SAG-AFTRA who helped perform multiple characters from written screenplays by members of NWSG
From the Northwest Screenwriters Guild:
The Northwest Screenwriters Guild is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to advancing the careers of screenwriters, filling a major gap in the education and training available to screenwriters and filmmakers from across the spectrum, namely, how to take care of the business side of show business.
The newest generation of filmmakers will be pivotal. They consume—and create—film and video in huge volumes, in dozens of formats, on at least five form factors. The technological barriers to filmmaking have been reduced to nearly nothing, and so many of the old rules about when, where, and how audiences will watch the film have been shredded. These filmmakers will be at the leading edge of reinventing this industry yet again. We are here to help them get down to business.
Whether it’s a web series, TV, or feature films, breaking into the industry can be harder than writing a great script or making a great short film. While the barriers to filmmaking have crumbled, the barriers to becoming a professional filmmaker are as high as ever. To learn more, review the NwSG bylaws that govern the board.
Seattle, WA. The IDIC Filipino Senior & Family Services is a Filipino nonprofit organization based in Beacon Avenue, South Seattle. The Covid-19 pandemic has not stopped the nonprofit from serving the elderly community, underserved immigrants, and vulnerable families. Currently, most of the nonprofit’s services have shifted online via appointment for information and housing assistance, but the nonprofit is still offering no-contact meal delivery for seniors in need as seen above.
Launched in 1973 as a small daycare, the nonprofit now provides multiple services to the Filipino community. The organization advocates for healthcare benefits, social security assistance, and other concerns the elderly Filipino community members may experience.
Volunteers of the IDIC help out with bagging groceries and supplies for delivery.
The IDIC Filipino Senior & Family Services has been faring well despite the Covid-19 crisis, but the community they served still needs more help. One positive development is that volunteers have managed to shift their priorities to delivering food meals and bags to the seniors of the community most impacted (seniors are more vulnerable to getting harsher health issues to recover from due to Covid-19) with the help of the local food bank.
Once a week, the organization delivers prepared food. Volunteers serve more than 200 individuals over the age of 55 and adults with disabilities.
The IDIC Filipino Senior & Family Services hopes to expand its efficiency to provide more adequate care to underserved communities. As a result, they now have two more vehicles to help out with transportation. A bus for the elderly to get to and from the center, and a car to deliver the food bags around the Beacon area.
The organization is still very much in need of more volunteers (drivers and baggers) to help provide warm meals for the most vulnerable seniors and are grateful for the support they have received to continue their services.
From IDIC Filipino Senior & Family Services:
At the present home of IDIC on Beacon Hill in South Seattle, a broad range of services available to members and county residents include information and assistance, veterans’ advocacy and benefits assistance, health seminars, estate planning guide and referrals, subsidized housing advice, disability and social security benefits advocacy, and other concerns that seniors citizens encounter. To combat mild depression there is PEARLS (Program to Encourage Active, Rewarding Lives for Seniors), courtesy of the City of Seattle’s Human Services Department.
The IDIC is managed by an Executive Director who reports to a 15-member Board. With its current resources, the IDIC has a total of nine full and part-time staff. They work closely with community-based organizations like the Sound Generations, Food Lifeline, Filipino War Veterans of Washington (FWVW), Asian Counseling & Referral Service (ACRS), the Filipino Community of Seattle (FCS), Muckleshoot Tribe Foundation, King County, City of Seattle Human Services Department Aging & Disability Services, and the Seattle Foundation to name a few.
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