This past weekend our Portland Solutions group held our weekly meeting on Thursday to touch base and assess how we were doing in terms of staying on task and accomplishing our goals. On Saturday, we had three groups of two and went canvassing. On Sunday, we went to the farmers market from 10:30 to 4 p.m. to talk with members of the community.

We plan to knock on a total of 1200 doors in the Lents area during the summer. Currently, we are planning a mega canvass that we will have in a few weeks. For the mega canvass we will be inviting a large group together to come walk around the neighborhood and talk with residents. We will also be contacting local reporters and other media sources to gain some media attention, which will help more people become aware of our program.

For me, canvassing is getting more and more comfortable. And the more comfortable I feel, the more I am able to enjoy it. The weather on our canvass day was excellent as well, which made it easier for us to walk around and be efficient while canvassing. It’s nice to see people walking around and enjoying the sun. Everyone seems to be in better mood on a nice day and the sunny weather is always a fun topic to talk about in Portland.

People in the area love going to their local restaurants, salons and stores. A question we asked folks at the market was “What is your favorite local business.” I heard many great descriptions of a number of places I will need to check out sometime. It always seems I find the best places to eat or to buy things at after talking to others. All of the favorite local businesses were posted on our map of Lents at our table.

Nearly everyone that came up to our table that Sunday commented on the empty lot behind us and they asked if we knew what the city was doing about that, or why they knocked the buildings down that were there in the first place. I had no answer for them unfortunately, but I found it interesting that so many people noticed and seemed to care about what was going on back there. It is now a goal of mine now to find out why the buildings in the lot were torn down. I learned Sunday that Lents has a history of demolishing buildings and not rebuilding; the residents don’t seem to like that too much.