Location: White Center Heights Park

Date: Saturday, June 25

Time: 9am-1pm

Activity: Vital work to benefit the wildlife and plant community.  Maintenance/invasive removal around restoration plantings

Event Description:

Thanks to a generous donation by the Starbucks Coffee Company, White Center Heights Park received an ‘Ultimate Park Makeover’ in 2007.  Almost overnight, this previously run-down urban park was transformed into a safe and enjoyable gathering place for the surrounding community.  With the help of 1,500 volunteers, this park is now home to a grass berm amphitheater, community garden, walking trail, pea patch, and picnic shelter and tables.

White Center Heights Park is surrounded by enhanced Class II wetlands and has a large year round pond, making the park a great place for wildlife, as well as the community, to gather.  In a heavily urban environment, these natural areas provide needed refuge for resident wildlife species and others just passing through.   Massive amounts of blackberry, Scot’s Broom, and knotweed have been removed over the past two years, and the whole site has been replanted with native trees and shrubs.  At this event, we will be removing invasive re-sprouts to prevent them from gaining  a foothold.

Your volunteer efforts will protect our young native plantings from being overtaken by invasives, and jumpstart their journey toward becoming a mature and healthy forested wetland community.  Besides helping the park and community of White Center Heights, you’ll be helping yourself too!  Getting outside and doing physical work in the sunny summer weather is a great way to improve your health and well-being.  Hope to see you there!

Additional Information:
Tools, work gloves, water, and light snacks will be provided.

This event will happen rain or shine, so be sure and dress for the weather!

What to bring:

-          Clothes you don’t mind getting dirty

-          Layers - non-cotton recommended

-          Rain coat

-          Closed toed shoes or rubber boots - sturdy shoes for working in uneven terrain

-          Lunch/snack

-          Water

Volunteers must be able to work on uneven terrain and in inclement weather.  The site is not wheelchair accessible.

Restrooms - There is a Honey Bucket on site.

This is a family-friendly event, so please feel free to bring your kids!  Young children are welcome with a parent’s supervision.  Minimum age to volunteer is 5 years if accompanied by an adult.

This event is a great opportunity for students to earn community service hours.  Youth ages 16 and over can volunteer without parental supervision if they bring a King County youth liability waiver with parent signature to the event.

Website:  http://www.kingcounty.gov/recreation/parks/inventory/whitecenterheights.aspx

To sign up for this event, request a youth waiver, or for more information, please contact:

Rachel Maranto: 206-849-4406, rachel.maranto@kingcounty.gov

VISION

White Center Promise is a long-term initiative aimed at eradicating poverty in White Center through a continuum of educational results that brings about social change.  Our goal is that all children in White Center will graduate from high school and earn a post-secondary credential that leads to a living wage career. We will align the voices, work and resources of community members, community organizations and area institutions across sectors to ensure that we eliminate barriers and provide a foundation for family and student success.

To read the rest of the Theory of Change, go to www.whitecenterpromise.org. It is currently under construction.

Mapping Our Voices for Equality (MOVE) unveiled these three digital short stories featuring two staff members of the CDA, plus Colleen from Young’s Restaurant in White Center. You can view them all here:

Nhan Nguyen, Neighborhood Revitalization Program Manager - The Chronicles of Nina

Peter Chum, Neighborhood Revitalization Assistant - The Need for Healthy Choices at Community Colleges

Colleen Young, Young’s Restaurant - What’s Pretty?

A celebration of students’ accomplishments at a morning full of demonstrations, presentations, competitions and awards:

LIVE Presentations by young physicists!
Incredible, Amazing Robots that will save the world!
Kids Engineering Web 3.0?!?!
1st through 8th Grade Students will astound and entertain you!

Some snacks will be provided. Bring a bag lunch if you plan on staying all morning.

TechStart Expo 2011
Saturday, June 18
11:00am - 1:00pm

Southwest Boys and Girls Club
9800 8th Ave. SW, Suite 105
Seattle, WA 98106

This new program will assist low income City of Seattle residents and residents of White Center (zip codes 98106, 98126, 98146) enroll in an employment and training program at Seattle Central community college. Currently, there are openings for Summer Quarter beginning June 28th.

The White Center CDA expresses our heartfelt thank you to all of our 630+ Spring Clean volunteers! It was a great event; heavily attended by youth of all ages, our elders, our many different immigrant communities, our longtime residents, and our community partners/sponsors to keep White Center a cleaner, safer, healthier place to live.

Mural project on 16th and 98th.

A before and after photo at the White Center Heights Elementary project. Photos by Adrian Hedwig.

Also visit White Center Now for their rundown and gallery of photos and the West Seattle Herald/White Center News for the same. We’ll have official event photos, courtesy of Youth Media Institute, in our photo gallery soon.

We’ll see you at next year’s White Center Spring Clean - Saturday, May 19, 2012!

(click on image to enlarge)

ATTENTION CURRENT AND FUTURE WHITE CENTER CDA MEMBERS!

Last year, we held a series of CDA Membership Mixers to connect our membership with resources, network with each other and how we can all work together to make a better White Center. We’re happy to announce the first CDA Membership Mixer of the year, and it’s going to be a fun one.

Stop by the world famous DubSea Coffee on Friday, May 20, from 5:00pm-7:00pm and meet your fellow CDA Members! We’ll have food and drink, resource tables, community announcements, activities, a raffle, how you can be more involved in CDA events, and more.

PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM TO RSVP BY CLICKING HERE

You do not have to be a CDA Member to attend this event - if you are interested in learning more about being a CDA Member and would like to possibly sign up at the Mixer, feel free to attend!

We also have a CDA Membership page on our website, which is under construction but will have updated information soon.

See you there!

To all our registered volunteers, here’s what your Spring Clean event t-shirt will look like! See you tomorrow =)