photo by Michael Harthorne - Ballard News Tribune

Thank-you to the over 20 neighbors and donors who attended our planting partnerships kickoff event last Wednesday Dec 16th. Thank-you to Jeanette and Todd, owners of Nervous Nellie’s Espresso, for opening their space to us for the evening, and thanks to Nicole for serving up the drinks and helping us clean up! Thanks to Ballard Market for ingredients for the food we served. Plus a huge thanks goes out to Shannon Dunn (civic soldier extraordinaire) who sent out beautiful invitations to the donors, cooked us up a hot meal, decorated the space beautifully, plus so much more that I don’t have enough space here to include! We’re well on our way to making successful partnerships with this project and we haven’t even planted anything yet!

If you missed our event, check out the Ballard News Tribune’s article. Thank-you, Michael, for covering our event.

Also, check out our work plan. We’ve confirmed April 17th for planting day, so make sure you get that date on your calendar today! If you see an activity in the work plan that interests you, please contact me (Dawn) at eastballard@gmail.com.

In addition to the work plan, we’re looking for some expertise in the following roles:

• Volunteer Coodinator(s) – We need someone to maintain our volunteer pledge list and coordinate getting volunteers to events and help out with individual activities of their stated interest.
• Construction Coordinator – We’re looking for someone who has experience managing construction projects. Maybe you are or know someone who’s retired and looking for a way to be involved in the community. We’re finding that this project is going to require a lot of coordination between  SDOT, the city permitting office, delivery services, and so on, with strict deadlines. Someone with this type of experience would be incredibly valuable to this project!
• Artist(s) – We’re looking for artists who have experience working with elementary students to create art pieces with the students at St. Alphonsus Elementary, that will be installed with the planters. This project would need to be done during the school year either in winter, spring or fall of 2010.
• Social Networking Guru – Help us become more effective in communicating with the online community via social networking tools like Facebook. This would not only help our project, but the ebca as a whole!