MAPLE Oregon
Achieving financial independence, PERMANENT Housing, AND FOOD SECURITY ONE COMMUNITY AT A TIME
with temporarily housed communities, we co-design and implement approaches to financial strengthening for people to gain PERMANENT HOUSING and FOOD SECURITY.
With Everyone Village Eugene (E1V)—https://everyonevillage.org/
Everyone Village (E1V) is a 70+ person transitional shelter community located in West Eugene. With E1V residents, we co-designed a matched savings, financial planning, and asset building program to achieve their own goals and aspirations while gaining access to housing, community gardens, and employment through micro-enterprises.
Currently, Everyone Village is developing a new microvillage of larger, more permanent houses. MAPLE Oregon’s role is to work closely with prospective residents to ensure they can sustainably afford $300 a month to live in this new microvillage. Residents will continue to have access to community gardens, and micro-enterprise employment.
With Emerald Village Eugene (EVE)—https://www.squareonevillages.org/emerald
Prior to partnering with Everyone Village (E1V), we worked with residents of Emerald Village Eugene (EVE), a permanent tiny-house cooperative built by SquareOne Villages. With EVE residents we co-designed and established:
a greenhouse and community garden;
several microbusinesses;
a savings and loan group;
pathways for generating additional income;
a robust community fund;
a entirely self-governing process for villagers to manage that fund on their own;
ways to grow that fund with MAPLE’s continuing support.
With the Community of p:ear in Portland, Oregon—https://www.pearmentor.org/
Currently, we are expanding operations to Portland, Oregon, with two new partner organizations: p:ear mentor, a non-profit that creatively mentors unhoused youth, and Trailhead Credit Union, a local financial institution with a mandate in its charter to “serve the unserved”. The pilot program we have co-designed together with p:ear youth and partners includes pathways to:
Get out of debt (if they have debt) with Maple serving as guarantor at Trailhead Credit Union to make this happen.
Save regularly with a 1:1 match provided by Maple and our community supporters.
Build credit through receiving and repaying microloans in partnership with Trailhead Credit Union.
Build financial planning skills through close mentorship and experiential learning within the context of their own lives and aspirations.
Every participant in this pilot program is now housed while also enjoying more choices in life. Based on the success of participants in the pilot program, we are currently expanding the program to serve additional, deserving, at-risk youth in Portland.
Why we work across such diverse cultures & communities in Uganda, Chile, and Oregon
Through MAPLE’s cross-cultural approach, we learn from working with diverse communities around the world. Then we share what we learn with program participants across all branches. This process enables the communities with whom we work to build on their own cultural values while innovating with the wisdom of incredibly resilient communities beyond their own localities.
Our basic assumption is that true self-governance depends upon the capacities for persons, families, and communities to fund their own initiatives while also retaining access to arable land for food security.
