For 2021, Knot is partnering with Helping Hands Reentry Outreach Centers for our annual Share the Love initiative. Each February since 2010, we have mobilized the resources of our staff and our network to raise awareness, funds and in-kind donations for local non-profits who are doing exceptional work in our community.
Courtesy of Ethos
Knot's Share the Love event, 2016
Courtesy of Urban Gleaners
Helping Hands is an Oregon-based non-profit providing transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness. Founded by Alan Evans, who himself was homeless for over 25 years, their Outreach Centers are located in eleven facilities across four counties in Oregon. The newest is Bybee Lakes Hope Center, which will provide housing and trauma-informed services together in one location. The project’s adaptive reuse of the minimum security Wapato Jail is innovative, but budget constraints limit the ability to truly transform the space into a place where families feel at home. Knot has set a $60,000 goal for contributions at its GoFundMe page, and we hope you will consider joining us to help make this vision a reality.
This year’s effort builds on an annual tradition that stretches back to 2010, when the firm, then known as Anderson Krygier, began to celebrate Valentine’s Day by hosting charitable events. We trace the idea back to its conception by Elizabeth Anderson and Lynn Parsons, who sought to reinvent the holiday after the passing of founding partner John Krygier. Knot carries on this tradition, which retains meaning for us in its continuity and longevity, fortifying our shared belief that we should endeavor to take care of our community like we take care of our families and businesses.
While Knot has hosted these events, the impact has really been made possible by the many friends, family, and colleagues who have attended. The generosity they have shown with their time and resources is immense.
So far, Share the Love has partnered Knot with 11 different non-profit organizations, most of which are based in the Oregon communities in which we live. The inaugural year benefited Community Warehouse, setting a precedent for groups that work directly with the most vulnerable populations to provide the services that are most needed. This thread of food and housing insecurity was carried forward in 2012 (Community Transitional School), 2015 (Urban Gleaners), 2020 (Central City Concern), and into this year with Helping Hands. As a way of extending a gesture of welcome to the thousands of international refugees who come to Oregon each year, our 2018 partner Butterfly Boxes delivers care packages to families as they arrive at PDX airport.
In 2011, we partnered with Children’s Healing Art Project, which initiated another theme, that of the power of the arts to uplift children no matter their socioeconomic status, geographic location or health. Ethos (2016) provides music lessons, classes, camps, performances and workshops to more than 7,000 students across Oregon each year, and Fear No Music (2017) promotes world-class music education, mentorship, and music as a form of activism for social justice.
In 2013 and 2014, our Share the Love partners were both organizations that “harness” the power of animal companions for therapeutic purposes. Canine Companions for Independence enhances the lives of people with disabilities, while Forward Stride offers equine facilitated rehabilitation, psychotherapy and skills workshops for children and adults of all abilities.
For Knot, this tradition is consistent with everything we do. We look to our practice itself as a fundamental tool in making a positive impact. With a focus on maintaining a shared ethos in our day-to-day work, we center the voices of diverse stakeholders and strive to achieve environmental justice via design. During 2020, we donated over 700 design hours to community benefit projects, including placemaking work at Bybee Lakes Hope Center and Parkpulse, a web resource created to empower safe and equitable access to public parks and natural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic.
And so it is in the same spirit that each February, we mobilize our networks to bolster the work of organizations making a tangible difference in people’s lives.
