ZGF Honored For Art Support

Portland - Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership (ZGF) was celebrated as the Top Contributor to the Regional Arts & Culture Fund at Northwest Business for Culture and the Arts recently.

The award recognizes companies that contribute to the arts and culture through workplace giving. ZGF provides employees the opportunity to donate to the Regional Arts & Culture Fund through automatic payroll deduction, and then matches those donations dollar for dollar.

In fall 2004, ZGF was among 14 leadership companies, to be the first to provide their employees with an opportunity to support the arts at work through payroll deduction, by adding the Regional Arts & Culture Fund to the company's annual charitable giving campaign. The generosity of employees, together with ZGF's 100 percent match of employee gifts, raised a total of $5,144.

Jetty Repairs Protect Coastline

Astoria - Left unchecked, damaged jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River would allow the inflow of tremendous volumes of sand into the heavily-traveled channel, impacting shipping routes and upsetting import-export traffic from as far away as South Dakota. Faced with this scenario, the Portland District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has contracted with Tapani Underground, Inc., Battle Ground, Wash., to make the repairs necessary to ensure uninterrupted shipping through the channel for decades to come. Tapani has responded with a game plan that calls for movement and placement of nearly 71,000 tons of material, innovative repair approaches, and equally innovative equipment - including a Hitachi EX1200 excavator with a Jewell front end and massive 146-inch grapple - to bring it to bear.

Jetty walls of the type in place at the Columbia are constructed by placing a bed of rocks into the sand on the ocean floor. Larger boulders, called "core stones," are placed on top of this bed to form the main body of the jetty. Progressively larger boulders are added in layers to form the outer "armor" shell of the structure. The largest of the boulders (some weighing 30 tons to 40 tons each) are placed on the upper part of the structure and toward its seaward side where waves and currents are most powerful. Despite their massive weight, the ocean's force can still cause these stones to shift with seemingly little effort - it is this armor stone, which Massie's crew is replacing.

Mentor Program Looking for Volunteers

Portland - A unique career mentoring program, developed by Portland YouthBuilders (PYB), urgently needs more volunteer career mentors to give just two hours a month to graduates.

The PYB Mentoring Program aims to support very low-income high school students as they graduate from PYB and launch their careers in the construction or computer technology fields.

Mentors, who come from all walks of life, commit to meeting once a month for one year with their mentees. AMentors attend a short orientation and training session, receive an extensive training manual with suggested activities, and can count on ongoing support from PYB staff.

Funding for the Mentorship Initiative comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the City of Portland's Bureau of Housing and Community Development, the Kinship Foundation, and the W. Glen Boyd Charitable Foundation.

For more information on mentoring a PYB student log onto www.pybpdx.org.