Latest News From Summer 2022

Greetings,

We hope this finds you all well and enjoying your summer.

This has been a very busy season for us as we are reassessing and deepening our Workforce Internship programs and building more collaborative partnerships. First and foremost, we would like to extend a heartfelt Thank You to all of our Donors!

Each and every one of you are very important in helping to support our work in providing a pathway to living wage jobs through our Wisdom Workforce Development Internships for Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) internships.

Wisdom’s internship provides hands-on experiences and teaches about First Foods restoration and preservation, seed collection and soil remediation for the health and healing of the land. Interns have classroom and hands-on experiences they can directly apply to their own goals.

From the opportunity to be hired on with Wisdoms Workforce Crew or apply the skill set in their college pursuits, or enhancing work related skills. Our partnership with Zenger Farms and The Native Gather Garden are examples of Wisdoms outreach to the younger students as well as college level cohorts.

Secondly, I would like to extend a Thank You to our collaborative partners. We are delighted to be working with our many partners throughout the Metro region who also help elevate and deepen our commitment to meaningful outreach within our shared communities. We have been growing our collaborations to help make a substantial difference in our shared communities through education and by planting more trees, reviving the land and waterways and planting new vegetation that is helpful and healing.

Lastly, I would like to encourage you to take a look at Wisdom’s Social Media sites. There you can find other ways to be engaged with our organization as well as opportunities to learn about and/or engage with some of our partners and with other BIPOC businesses and Organizations.

Wisdom’s multi-media department has been busy with ongoing projects and some new ones this summer. Wisdom’s Director of Multi-Media and Co-Director/Producer of Wisdom’s ongoing documentary film series, Tim Keenan Burgess recently completed a long paused program and cultural exchange between Wisdom of the Elders, Inc and the Musrara phototherapy school in Jerusalem Israel.

The trip and program between the two countries’ artists aim to bring light to the common ground we share with our friends from numerous religions, ideologies, and geographic regions on the other side of the world.

The department is also excited to announce a renewed partnership with Open Signal, a community media center in the heart of NE Portland. Tim Keenan Burgess and Damien Cross have been accepted into the summer cohort for a 6 months intensive film video program to sharpen their skills, create content for marketing, and learn about training techniques so that they can start our media internship program back up.

Wisdom would also like to announce for the third year in a row our organization has been accepted into the WW Give guide campaign. Stay tuned for more on that.

It is indeed through unity and shared purpose that we can all grow and thrive while building each other up for a brighter future for ourselves and this amazingly beautiful planet we share.

Continue to take care of yourselves and each other.

My best to you,

Teresa Montana

Exec. Dir.