The last couple years have been amazing for OPI. To date we’ve marshaled over 900 hours of volunteer labor to improve our City’s pitches. Those volunteers helped level, seed and restore eight different fields, repaint 70 goals, remove yards of concrete and repair countless pieces of irrigation equipment. We’ve improved or added pitches to 4 different City parks and 2 of Portland’s schools. We are immensely proud of our volunteers who make all this work possible.
But this year we’re on to something we hope will be our biggest project yet.
And we’ll need your help to make it happen.
This year we’re working to build Bless Field: a youth-sized all-season pitch for the kids of Portland’s New Columbia neighborhood.
The New Columbia community is home to nearly 1,200 kids from 22 countries speaking more than 11 different languages and we see Bless Field as a place where all of these kids can share the common language that is the beautiful game. Bless Field is designed to support AC Portland sponsored work through nearby Rosa Parks Elementary School and after-school programs through the Regence Boys & Girls Club.
Its a major project for sure – but one worthy of the effort. Want to lend us a hand? Here’s how you can help:
- Share. Love soccer? Live in the New Columbia community? Want to support Portland’s youth? Then grab the link to this page and email your friends, post on Facebook, share on Twitter…whatever works for you. Help us get the word out to people who you think would support a project like this.
- Sign Up. If you aren’t already on our mailing list, please sign up. We won’t spam you and you can unsubscribe at any time, but we will keep you informed of our progress, volunteer opportunities and ideas on how you can help on this and other OPI projects.
- Contact. Do you work in construction? Are you an arborist? Maybe you have contacts in the artificial turf industry. We’ll need all kinds of help to get this done. Drop us a line if you have skills or resources you can contribute toward the project.
- Follow. Give us a follow on Twitter @OPIPDX and keep an eye on our blog to stay up on news about the Bless Field project.
- Donate. The most direct way you can help is to send a few bucks our way. Every little bit helps. We need to raise around $200,000 to make this happen. While we are well on our way, your support makes a difference. Head on over to our donation form or contact us directly to make a donation.
We think there is no better expression of OPI’s history and purpose than a project like Bless Field. With your help, it’s not impossible to imagine Bless Field as a place where a future Timbers or Thorns star learns the game and goes on to score a winning goal on our field in front of the best supporters in the world.
