Students in our summer school program made products for sustainable living and showed them off this week in our courtyard, as part of our “Sustainable Summer at Serendipity” program!
Items presented for sale include art pieces, masks, birdhouses, plant pots, and other fun handmade crafts.
Our Board of Directors and staff came together to help out our Growing Minds Garden Saturday morning, July 17.
Nicolas and Taylor, our garden leaders, set us to the necessary work of cleaning up the garden from summer weeds and getting beds ready for planting. Much fun was had along with hard work and service. We enjoyed some good laughs and conversation over a nice outdoor lunch and accomplished a great deal, including trimming over 50 POUNDS of garlic! We were very happy to welcome Board members Michael Hsu, Rick Larson, and Patrick Wrobel to the Garden and introduce them to life at Serendipity.
We are very grateful to everyone who showed up and put in the work, and to Nicolas and Taylor for taking the lead and putting us to work. Stay tuned for more growth in our Garden!
PHOTOS:
Top Left: Belinda, Michael, Nicolas, and Rick busy helping clean out a garden bed.
Top Right: Board members Michael Hsu & Rick Larson hard at work in the garden.
Bottom: Garden supervisor Nicolas Townsend showing Executive Director Belinda Marier & HR Manager Wendy Law how to pull overgrown purple broccoflower.
Serendipity Center welcomes our new Executive Director, Mr. Mark Takehara, who will officially start on Monday, August 9, 2021. Mark brings to this role his extensive experience in a wide array of non-profit youth development and education programs, including 15 years of executive leadership.
Mark started his career in non-profits back in 2002 with the Boys & Girls Clubs in Southern CA and most recently was interim Executive Director for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bend that serves over 300 youth. He holds an MBA from the UC Riverside A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration with a minor in Chinese from Brigham Young University.
The Board and Leadership of Serendipity found Mark through an intensive search process that was expertly facilitated by Nonprofit Professionals Now. During his first few weeks at Serendipity Mark will take part in a comprehensive knowledge transfer with our outgoing Executive Director, Belinda Marier.
Serendipity has been so fortunate to have a leader like Belinda at the helm for the past 21 years and to have found such a highly capable and promising individual like Mark to guide us into the future.
Please join us in officially welcoming Mark Takehara!
We are so thrilled to wish Serendipity’s class of 2021 a huge congratulations! Despite the challenges of completing diploma requirements through distance learning, 10 seniors graduated this past week on June 17! We want to wish them the very best and say “WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU!”
Thank you so much to Brown and Brown Northwest Insurance, KPFF, and Heritage Bank for their support of Serendipity students and our mission.
As we only have a few more weeks until we close our fundraising campaign for the 2020-2021 school year, please consider donating by clicking here. Thank you!
In our final Resiliency Conversation, Executive Director Belinda Marier shares with us how Serendipity will be transitioning into a hybrid model of instruction in the next few weeks. She also extends her personal invitation to Serendipity’s ‘Expressions of Resiliency’, a video event on April 30th that will wrap up the first phase of our Resiliency Response Fundraising Campaign. We are so excited to have you join us to learn more about how your support has been an integral part of keeping Serendipity strong and resilient during the incredible challenges of this pandemic!
If you haven’t had a chance to donate yet, please consider clicking the link below:
Thank you so much to our corporate donors The Standard and BRIC Architecture! WE are so grateful for their generous support of our Resiliency Response!
In Resiliency Conversation #9 we get a chance to hear from our Data Analyst and Reports Developer, Deb Schultz, about her new position and work at Serendipity which is being called the Outcomes Project. She shares her excitement about being able to interpret and apply data in a meaningful way to help our students achieve their goals as well as communicate the importance and impact of Serendipity’s mission.
Everything that Deb is working on is part of a larger undertaking called the Outcomes Project. This project is incredibly significanct in informing the evolution of our school, and children’s mental health service delivery in general. We want to extend a special thanks to the Heatherington Foundationfor being the first investor in the Outcomes Project. They are responsible for much of the progress that is occuring and we are so grateful for their generosity.
Our Resiliency Response Fundraising Campaign is wrapping up in April and we need your help to reach our goal! Every donation matters! Please consider supporting Serendipity by clicking here.