Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Why the 2 months of silence? Blue Mouse Monkey has been very busy with several new projects, and we are thrilled to be working with a collection of clients in the world of funders and non-profits.

I’ve also been invited by the National Science Foundation to be participate in a panel to choose the winning proposal for a major online resource in Ethics in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. It’s an honor to be invited, and it’s fascinating to read these proposals for such a ambitious and worthy project. However, the proposals are long, dense, and detailed, and reading them with the closeness required to make an informed comparison is time-consuming . . . but more about that later. For this post I wanted to write about our current website projects:

OTREC, the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, is one of the national UTCs (I didn’t know what that meant before this either). As such they disburse federal dollars to research projects in transportation at four Oregon Universities. OTREC’s themes (each UTC is different) are 1. Innovations in Sustainable Transportation through Advanced Technology, 2. Integration of Land Use and Transportation, and 3. Healthy Communities. What’s not to love?

The new Blue Mouse Monkey OTREC website will be launched in early September.

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The Spirit Mountain Community Fund is the philanthropic arm of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde. The fund gives millions from the Tribe’s casino to Oregon non-profits. They also operate a fellowship program to send Native American youth to serve with Congressional Offices in Washington, D.C., and a tribal grant program to benefit development projects in other Oregon tribes.

Here’s something I didn’t know till I met the good folks at SMCF: “The Tribe” as it’s known is made up of the descendants of the many Oregon tribes that lived in the Willamette Valley and the Columbia Gorge until they were evicted by the US government in the winter of 1857. They were forcibly marched to a reservation in a move dubbed Oregon’s Trail of Tears. Adding insult to injury, the tribe lost its Federal recognition in 1954 and the reservation was reduced to 7½ acres. The tribe’s status was restored in 1983. Since then the Tribe has gotten back on its feet through an ambitious economic development program to achieve self-sufficiency.

“The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde through the Spirit Mountain Community Fund fulfills their Native tradition of potlatch, a ceremony at which good fortune is distributed. The Spirit Mountain Community Fund’s focus is to improve the quality of life in Northwest Oregon through community investments that provide lasting benefits consistent with the Tribe’s culture and values.”

Coming from New Zealand where post-colonial issues are more top-of-mind with the general population than here, it’s been really interesting for me to meet folks from the Tribe and come to understand something about the journey they have taken as a people and a culture in order to adapt to circumstances that were forced upon them.

The new Blue Mouse Monkey Spirit Mountain Community Fund website will be launched in late September.

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PlayWrite, Inc, is a Portland organization that uses “the power of performance in art to transform the lives of youth at the edge” They go into schools, particularly under-served schools, and do a two-week residency that brings young people together with coaches from the Portland performing arts community. Students work one-on-one with coaches, learning and honing the tools for creating a play.

“Each play in its entirety springs solely from the mind, feelings and heart of the young writer. At the end of the workshop, professional actors perform a staged reading of the plays before a live audience. This performance – the culmination of three weeks’ work – is a collaborative event involving author, actors and audience. The young writers glow with well-deserved pride as they witness their work being brought to life.”

The new Blue Mouse Monkey PlayWrite website, in all it’s dramatic, swirling, plum-colored glory, will roll out in late August.

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TOFCO is the Tobacco Free Coalition of Oregon, a not for profit organization that includes a coalition of businesses, organizations and individuals who advocate for programs and policies to decrease the toll of tobacco-use in Oregon. The new Blue Mouse Monkey version of their website, launching in October, will be a one-stop shop for anyone looking for information about tobacco use in Oregon, including science, policy, and community information, as well as an examination of the ironies inherent in linking tobacco use with being cool.

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We’re excited to be working with these diverse organizations to help them frame their issues, disseminate their value, and strengthen their voice in the community!