Cow plops help students build houses in Tijuana

Sacred Heart Church’s affiliate parish Newman Catholic Campus Ministries at Western Washington University, is going to Tijuana, Mexico during spring break to build houses for underserved communities.

The first 30 students who applied were accepted. Danny Fehrenbarch, Chair Minister of Social Justice, said that it’s a first come, first serve basis.

NCCM has gone to Tijuana to build houses for 30 years.

Newman Catholic Campus Ministries used Esperanza International, a non-profit organization based in Tijuana, Mexico, to find a place to volunteer.  Fundación Esperanza de México, a division of Esperanza International “hosts groups of volunteers to help build homes and work on other projects in the under-served communities of Tijuana. Volunteer groups generally work 3 to 10 days in an immersion experience of Mexican culture, socio-economic development, and leadership building,” states Esperanza International’s website.

Tijuana

Fundación Esperanza de México houses volunteer groups and coordinates the building projects.

Campus Minster Rachael Becker said that Esperanza helps people who have a desire to stay in Mexico.

“It’s families who are in need of a substantial home,” Becker said. “A place that is not going to be ruined by the elements and people who are committed to staying in Tijuana and being active in their community.”

Esperanza’s goal is to create a self-sustaining community. They help families assess their finances and figure out what they can afford. Once Esperanza is successful, they move on to another underserved community in Tijuana.

The houses are built in three parts: the foundation, the walls and the roof. Each group works for about a week to complete each step.

“The houses that Esperanza does are cement and ­­rebar based so they take three weeks to finish,” said Becker.

“Here we have cement machines that have the hose that dump it into the foundation,” Becker said. “There we use a cement mixer. You dump the cement into a trough and you scoop the cement out and put in a bucket and pass it all the way down to where you need it to go.”

Esperanza places volunteers where help is needed each day. This means that NCCM can spend time at multiple sites building houses.

“They are encouraged to help with their neighbor’s project,” Becker said. The goal is for the students to learn what Esperanza and the community is about.

Funding

It costs about $800 per student to go. Each student contributes $350, which covers airfare and fundraises for the remaining $450.

The NCCM has been fundraising since October for this trip to Tijuana.

“Most of our fundraisers were held at Sacred Heart,” Fehrenbarch said. “They’ve been really generous with the amount of they been able to donate and fundraise. Both through monetary donations, also through giving time and talent to the cause.”

Sacred Heart Church hosted a pancake breakfast in January, which raised $1,800 towards the collective trip fund.

 Sacred Heart also hosted a “Mexico dinner” with a silent and live auction. Becker said that local Mexican restaurants donated rice, beans, and chips for the dinner. The local businesses donated items they sold in their store or gift cards. The “Mexico dinner” raised $9,200 before expenses were taken out.

In addition to the other fundraisers, NCCM did a “cow plop” raffle where the winner was picked by a cow pooping in a gridded area.

“All the students are asked to sell 20 tickets,” Becker said, explaining how the fundraiser is set up. “Then they get between four and five dollars credit for the ticket. When we sell tickets at Sacred Heart, the money is distributed to all the students.”

Each ticket corresponded with a number in a gridded field. A cow is released into the grid, and the winner is determined by which square it poops in first.

“It’s a fun way to do a raffle, instead of doing it out of a hat,” Becker said.

The winner is awarded $200 and the excess money raised is then divided up among the students equal the credits they accumulated.

The “cow plop” brought in $2,780 into the general fund.

“In Washington State you can make up to $4,999 without needing a gambling permit,” Becker said explaining the limitations on how much they can make through a raffle.

Parenting education to be cut at WWC?

The Parenting Education program at Whatcom Community College is facing elimination next quarter. The department submitted two proposals, which reduce operating costs by 60 percent to stay alive.

If the department is cut, three parent educators will lose their jobs.

Children’s Co-Op Preschool in South Hill, Bellingham, is one of five preschools also affected by this decision.

Parent Educator Peggy Wepprecht has worked for the program for 34 years.

“The state and the nation had a recession,” Wepprecht said recalling the 1980s. “We had a huge cut back at that time. It wasn’t as drastic as we are facing now.”

Children’s Co-Op Preschool

When parents sign their children up at Children’s Co-Op Preschool, they are also signing up for the parenting education program at Whatcom Community College.

Parents pay $125 a month to Children’s Co-Op Preschool. Fourteen of those dollars are then turned over to Whatcom Community College as tuition for the program. The program is a three-credit class each quarter. In May, at the end of the school year, parents will have received nine credits and will have paid $126 for classes normally worth about $900.

“The state has always had tuition wavers, that’s what we fall under for the parent education program,” Wepprecht said explaining the reduced tuition. “That isn’t just here at Whatcom, but state wide.”

Children’s Co-Op Preschool is fully run by the parents and the parent education program coach parents in running the cooperative preschool as a small business in addition to parent education.

“The parents run the business, its their business, they have a non-profit number,” Wepprecht said. “The college is an advisor to the business. We only advise their board of directors, which are the parents, make the decision. We advise them but we do not have a vote on that board.”

The Children’s Co-Op Preschool has a board of volunteer parents who operate the preschool as a business.

They make all business decisions, from finances to staffing.

The board has a high turnover rate because children are typically in preschool for two years.

Coordinator of the Parenting Education program Kris Smith said that many parents do not have experience in running a small business.

Because of the high turnover rate, it would be difficult for Children’s Co-Op Preschool to operate without Whatcom Community College’s support.

In addition to the college’s support, Children’s Co-Op Preschool is under an umbrella liability insurance, which insures all cooperative preschools in the State of Washington.

To keep costs liability costs down, they require the child to adult ratio to be one to five, smaller than the state’s ratio. Additionally, parents need to go through health and safety training. The combination of the two criteria results in fewer incidents reported.

The proposal

The first proposal offers an immediate solution for the spring quarter. The second proposal offers suggestions for the future. The program’s current budget is $100,000 a year, most of which goes to salaries and benefits. The proposed budget would reduce the college’s cost to $40,000 a year.

The 60 percent cut back in operations entails parent educators working fewer hours, and cutting three of the four employees’ benefits.

The coordinator position that Kris Smith holds would be eliminated.

As part of the cutbacks, 10 sections will be reduced to five. Children’s Co-Op Preschool has three sections and will be reduced to one, under the proposal.

The reduced sections would not exclude any of the 130 families currently in the program. The class sizes at the college would increase and parent educators would spend less time in the preschools with the parents and children. Parent educators would spend time in the preschools as they see needed.

The decision

President Kathi Hiyane-Brown and has yet to make a decision.

“I could find out today, I could find out next week,” Smith said referring to decision to keep the parent education program and her job.

The decision will be made by the beginning of spring quarter.

Smith said that spring quarter is usually when the volunteer board meets to plan for its next year.

Smith encourages parents and residents to send emails to the school. She said it puts “friendly pressure” on the college to keep the program running.

Hoarding, what is it?

My previous article encompassed the show "Hoarders" from A&E network helping to clean out a resident's home from South Hill neighborhood of Bellingham, but what constitutes a hoarder?

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has six criteria to for fully diagnosing hoarding behavior. Although it is not in the main manual yet, hoarding disorder is being examined further. In short, the DSM-V defines a hoarder as “Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of the value others may attribute to these possessions.” The definition continues with the distress of discarding items as well as feeling the need t save items points to hoarding. In the case of an uncluttered space, only a third party’s intervention can spur the cleaning of said space. The symptoms cause distress on daily life. The full criteria and a list of questions to evaluate the severity of hoarding can be found here. DSM-V updated their definition on May 19, 2010.

                 

If you think you have hoarding, the International Obsessive-Compulsive DisorderFoundation offers assistance through education and support groups.

           

In the May 2011 issue of Journal of Clinical Psychology, the article Neuropsychological and Neural Correlated of Hoarding: a Practice-Friendly Review reports that hoarding can be a stand-alone condition, separate from OCD, dementia, brain damage, schizophrenia and autism. The article suggests that in the past hoarding has been associated with these disorders but now it has been present without any other symptoms. 

"Hoaders" Helps South Hill Resident

The A&E television show “Hoarders” removed 55,000 thousands pounds of garbage from a South Hill resident’s house in Bellingham. The show aired on A&E network on Jan. 23, 2012.

“Hoarders” protects the identity of the South Hill resident by giving her a nickname on the show, Carrie. Her identity has been held in the interest of her privacy.

In the last three years, Carrie, has been living without heat or water, and trash was not regularly taken out. Without water, her plumbing did not work.

Her neighbors reported a strange smell to the City of Bellingham

On Oct. 18, the health department deemed the house uninhabitable until the necessary repairs were made. The electrical and plumbing still need fixing.

“Hoarders” footage revealed the mess inside Carrie’s house—piles of garbage in every room knee to waist high

“Hoarders” brought Dr. Melva Green, a board certified psychiatrist specializing in obsessive-compulsive disorders and hoarding behaviors from Maryland, to help with the situation

When Green entered the house for the first time, Carrie instructed her not to breathe.  Carrie pushed on the door and told Green, “This is as far as it opens.”

American Psychiatric Association defines hoarding as  “persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of the value others may attribute to these possessions.”

The garbage blocked the door from opening and only allowed enough space for Carrie and Green to squeeze in.

The first words out of Green’s mouth was, “I already smell urine. So is that what is in these bottles?”

Many of her neighbors were not aware of what was happening inside the house, and few of her neighbors knew her. “Hoarders” helped her neighbors better understand the troubles in Carrie’s house.

Jan Resick lives three doors down from Carrie. She moved in about the same time Carrie did.

“I’ve felt sorry for her for the first 15 years,” Resick said referring to Carrie’s untidiness. “The last 10 years, I’ve been mostly annoyed.”

Carrie had trouble keeping the house clean and her daughter, Trish, said that she felt embarrassed growing up in the messy house on the show. She said on “Hoarders” that her classmates made fun of her on the bus to school.

“I would fill part of [the house], then live in a different part of the house,” Carrie said on the show. “It kept getting full, and I kept moving down, further and further in the house.”

Trish revealed on the show that she went to Child Protective Services at age 15. They told her that as long as she has a roof over her head and eating meals regularly, she should be thankful.

Carrie couldn’t be reached for an interview or comment.

Green inquired to how Carrie’s house got to the way it is. Carrie connected her hoarding to her history of abuse.

“I think I buried myself in garbage because I left like I’ve been discarded my whole life,” Carrie said on the show.

“I’ve been fighting that with religion and a lot of therapy,” Carrie said.

Carrie said her philosophical ideology is Buddhism.

“Hoarders” built Carrie a meditation room upstairs after all the garbage was cleared out. Resick said that she occasionally returns to her house to meditate.

“Hoarders” is providing Carrie with aftercare funds in addition to the meditation room. 

The show reported that Carrie is using her aftercare funds for house repairs and is continuing to work with a therapist.

Carrie can move back in once all necessary repairs and made, and the city has verified them.

 

Learn, Play, Act

Pastor Jon Hauerwas is searching for a community project for St. James Presbyterian Church, 910 14th St..

February 10, the Mission Committee held a meeting to discuss possible ideas for the project—Learn, Play, Act. One idea discussed was an afterschool program for students at Lowell Elementary School. On Wednesdays, students are released early from school at 1:15 p.m., rather than 3 p.m..

Other facets within the community were addressed for possible community projects such as education, counseling, housing and civil rights to name a few. St. James Presbyterian Church would team up with community organizations to donate their time and resources.

The committee will review proposals based on volunteer needs, financial needs and take away opportunities for church members. Proposals are due April 5.

The Mission Committee will decide on a project to undertake in May.

South Hill plans for its second neighborhood sign

South Hill neighborhood proposes to locate its second neighborhood sign on Knox Avenue in front of SPIE's building.

South Hill Neighborhood Association President Ray Ballweg submitted a proposal to SPIE to put the sign adjacent to its property. A decision has yet to be made.

Ballweg said during a phone conversation Sunday that, he thinks SPIE will give South Hill permission to install the sign adjacent to its property.

Ballweg said the South Hill Neighborhood Association is planning to install one sign per year. Last year South Hill put in its first neighborhood sign at the south corner of 14th Street and South State Street.

The first sign cost $1,422 plus an additional $248 for permits. South Hill residents donated money to cover the cost of the sign and permits. The current project is being funded by donations with help from the association's treasury. The treasury collects membership fees, currently at $10 a year, for their general treasury.

Not all of Bellingham's neighborhoods have neighborhood signs but the adjacent neighborhoods of Fairhaven, Happy Valley, York and Sehome do.

Welcome to South Hill neighborhood new site

Welcome to the South Hill news page. This site will includes news article and informative blog posts about South Hill neighborhood.


South Hill neighborhood is located between Fairhaven, WWU, Sehome and Central Business District of Bellingham, WA. For more information on South Hill, click here, and for information on the neighborhood associate click here.