Erin and Rufus playing with some toys and goofing around!
The V2 Crew was thrilled to volunteer recently at the Oregon Humane Society, Oregon’s oldest animal shelter, that was established back in 1868! Being a company of animal lovers, we were very excited to work with the volunteer staff at OHS to help with socializing the cats and dogs up for adoption. At our orientation, we were surprised to discover that OHS is one of the oldest shelters in the country, and that over the years, the facility has become quite state of the art – with a full medical facility and veterinary staff, as well as a behavior center where OHS behavior specialists work to train dogs so they can be adopted into a forever home. One of the biggest reasons animals are brought to the Oregon Humane Society are due to behavioral issues. With their partner network and amazing volunteers, OHS has become a no kill shelter that works to get every adoptable animal a loving home. In 2015, roughly 97% of cats and dogs brought to OHS were adopted. OHS offers training classes and one on one private training with your pooch on everything from basic manners to animal assisted therapy. They also offer many free workshops for the community. All of the training classes and workshops are offered by Certified Professional dog trainers.
The V2 Crew was proud to volunteer our time this last week at one of our favorite non-profit organizations – The Oregon Food Bank. V2 believes this is a very important cause because Oregon in particular is a very hungry state where roughly one in six people are food insecure, meaning they do not know where their next meal is coming from. In fact, the OFB states “ 270,000 people per month eat meals from emergency food boxes, which is about half of Portland’s population, and of those, 92,000 are children. Since the beginning of the Great Recession of 2008, emergency food distribution has increased by 41 percent.”
The Oregon Food Bank provides emergency meals to those in need by using a grass roots or community approach – they rely heavily on local volunteers, partnerships and donors to provide nutritious meals to people in Oregon and SW Washington. They are one of the most innovative Food Banks out there with their Fresh Alliance Program, which provides perishable food like meat, dairy and produce to the hungry. According to OFB, “Since it’s inception, the program has kept 16 million pounds of food from being wasted and has become a national model.”
This quarter, V2 decided we wanted to give back to our community by helping a cause that means a lot to us. That is why we decided to volunteer at the Oregon Food Bank. We learned during our volunteer work that 270,000 people per month eat meals from emergency food boxes. It was an eye opening experience to learn how many people in Multnomah and Clark County would go hungry without organizations like the Oregon Food Bank. The food bank relies heavily on help from their volunteers to get the food out to the food banks for people to be able to pick up. In 2013, volunteer hours at the food bank were equal to 74 full time employees, valued at $2.4 million dollars.