After six years, Stephen Hatfield, the Forest Park’s Conservancy’s Stewardship Director, has accepted a tremendously exciting professional opportunity with FPC’s partner REI as their new Outdoor Programs & Outreach Market Manager.
In his new role, Stephen will be developing and overseeing REI’s outdoor education, volunteerism, recreation programs, and community events within the Portland region. The FPC has greatly benefited from his wisdom and willingness to work with the organization’s leadership to grow The Conservancy’s stature, accomplishments and successes.
Stephen Hatfield (left) of the Forest Park Conservancy and Chris Enlow (right) of KEEN taking some time to visit during an event at KEEN’s office.
The Waterkeeper Alliance SPLASH Series invites Americans to swim, paddle and fish in their local waterways to celebrate and support the importance of clean water. Without clean water, we cannot swim, drink, fish and play in our local waterways. The SPLASH Series celebrates the fact that we have a right to clean water and raises important funds to protect that right.
Splash participates at Hackensack River Paddle
The SPLASH Series will take place on five waterways around the United States, and each of the SPLASH events will raise funds to support Waterkeeper Alliance and its local Waterkeeper organizations by engaging local citizens and clean-water enthusiasts in water-based activities like swimming, paddling and boating.
The first season of SPLASH events kicked off with the Hackensack River Paddle on October 1st in Hackensack, New Jersey. Next up is the The Great Oyster Point Runoff with Charleston Waterkeeper on November 5th in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Repurpose for Purpose Program is simple. We’re interested in pioneering new ways to ship KEEN products by challenging ourselves to consider each choice we make. Once we re-think our options, all sorts of new possibilities appear.
What is happening?
We’re repurposing corrugated cardboard used to ship KEEN products from factories and giving them a new life.
Getting the boxed repurposed for shipping shoes to KEEN retailers.
Final assembly
Why?
We save money by reducing the number of new boxes we buy. We improve efficiencies in the warehouse. And we lessen our impact on the environment.
In 2011, the Repurpose for a Purpose Program has the potential to help us save 144 trees. There is also a potential saving of 48,000 pounds greenhouse gas emissions from being emitted into the air, the equivalent of 4 less cars being driven.
88bikes just built its first 88bikeshop on the Navajo Nation in Utah! Designed by DesignBuildBLUFF and built by DBB staff and volunteers and 88bikes volunteers, it is sustainable, mobile, fully powered by solar panels, and built primarily from salvaged materials.
The 88bikeshop will be a base camp for bike workshops and clinics for kids on the Navajo Nation who will receive bikes this September. The 88bikeshop will also be a mobile adventure studio, supporting bike rides for kids throughout the area.
Thanks to KEEN, Osprey Packs and Eddie Bauer/First Ascent for supporting the 88bikeshop; thanks also to Kona bikes for sponsoring 50 rugged, hip, World Bikes for the project. The 88bikeshop was officially unveiled during the Moment of Happy on the Navajo Nation on September 7-8, 2011.
You can learn more here about 88Bikes, which is one of our Hybrid.Care partners.
On September 9th, a group of 11 people from KEEN went to Woodlawn Elementary School in Portland, Oregon to deliver more than 500 backpacks filled with school supplies to the entire school. The KEEN Garage had an in-store campaign where they pledged to donate a filled backpack for every pair of shoes sold to Schoolhouse Supplies. The kids, ranging in ages from kindergarten to 8th grade were so excited for and appreciative of their new packs. Each KEEN Skyline and Eaton backpack contained loose leaf paper, crayons or markers, erasers, glue sticks and pencils. What a great way to start the school year!
Donated backpacks and school supplies
The ever important eraser!
Ready for delivery
Carting the backpacks into the school
Ready for the school year
The volunteer group
This effort is part of the KGW School Supply Drive to encourage people to make cash and loose supply donations, with the purpose of sending 8,000 local area children back to school with the basic school supplies that they couldn’t otherwise afford.
“On a chilly afternoon in late June, we stood contemplating our options in an icy Oregon rain that pricked our skin like needles. The canyon’s 300-foot-high walls of chocolate rhyolite had corralled the river into a pool too deep to wade through, too cold to swim in. Turning back would mean a grueling two-day retreat upstream. If we pushed ahead we could be out in a day. The decision was painful but clear: time to strip and swim.” – New York Times, Bivouacking in Oregon’s Back of Beyond by Tim Neville
“Wet, bloody but not beaten: hikers show off their sodden feet and wounds from making their way through the canyon.” Credit: Tim Neville for The New York Times
The Backyard Collective provides a great way for CA member companies to volunteer together and to give back to their communities. More than 250 volunteers from CA member companies participated, including KEEN, Columbia Sportswear, Icebreaker, Merrell, Horny Toad, REI, and Egan & Associates.
We split up into teams and headed into the park to work alongside staff and volunteers from the FPC and the City of Portland’s Parks & Recreation Department. The name of the game was trail maintenance and restoration: pulling invasives, hauling rocks, shoveling gravel, digging dirt and re-sculpting the slope. The KEEN team got a special treat! We deconstructed a walking bridge and hauled out the water-logged boards 1 mile back to the trailhead.
Kirsten and Amy (left to right) with crowbars in hand
Susan, Taylor and Marco (left to right) removing nails
“I BELIEVE THAT DREAMS CAN COME TRUE” is a community project, taken on by Tay and Val, with the intentions to: Spread the belief that dreams can come true, share stories of people’s personal dreams and inspire dreams. As film-makers, their dream is to tell stories of love, life and hope; stories that inspire. This dream got lost amongst deadlines, budgets and expectations when we were working as full-time TV Producers/Directors.
“We made a decision to abandon our traditional TV business, sell everything we own and go collect people’s dreams all over the world, on our bicycles. Using our skills in story-telling, we want to document stories of people taking that first step towards their dreams, people en route chasing their dreams, and people already living their dreams,” comment Tay and Val.
Val (Left) Tay (Right) - Tiawan, March 2010
What is your playground of choice? “Our Playground of choice is every possible footprint on Mother Earth.”
What is one thing you can do to preserve your playground? “With Reverence and Gratitude – respect the land we trade on, respect the mountains we climb, respect the seas that we swim in. With footprint tread on this Earth, we give thanks and say ‘Thank You’ for that one more step taken on this journey.”
Favorite KEEN Shoe: “We wanted a pair of comfortable sandals that could bring us anywhere on this journey. From better push off support riding on our bicycles up the challenging slopes, to hiking up dirt trails for the next adventure, to jumping from one rock to another on the river, to maneuvering through wet and slippery local markets around the world, etc. And we found them with KEEN’s Newport H2 (Dark Citron for Tay and Living Coral f0r Val). They are our first pairs of KEEN shoes and they have helped us conquer our first mountain hike, here in Guatemala!”
KEEN Ambassador Program: At KEEN we are always looking for people in every community who are stewards of the outdoors and bring a new perspective to the idea of living a Hybrid.Life. At KEEN we strive to bring you closer to the outdoors by empowering our ambassadors to do the same for us!
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