The Community for Positive Aging has been successfully working to improve our capacity to increase our direct support for low-income + BIPOC seniors.

Our Equity Journey

As we thoughtfully work to be a more culturally inclusive and just organization, we recognize the complexities involved to bring about systemic change within our own organization.

We approach this important work with honest reflection and openness, hold ourselves accountable to move toward necessary change, and commit to:

  • Serve more BIPOC communities, starting with our absorption of the Giving Tree and Asian Food Pantry, and more broadly as we expand case management and other direct services.

  • Identifying, addressing and working to change institutional oppression within our organization so that staff, volunteers, the Board of Directors and those who partner with us will experience our work as inclusive.

  • Working to become more aware of whose voices shape our decisions and what voices are not heard. We must actively work to bring these voices to the forefront through board and staff recruitment, community partnerships, and other opportunities.

  • Holding ourselves accountable through transparency, evaluation and sharing our progress toward diversity, equity and inclusion goals.

  • Continuing regular meetings of our Equity and Inclusion Team and revising our equity statement and plan on an ongoing basis.

CFPA offers a message of solidarity

We are committed to making the necessary space to process and grieve these losses, and to do the work necessary for real change to take place.

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Our Progress

In 2021 we expanded to provide strengths-based case management to elders and those living in affordable housing properties. We also hired a bilingual (English/Spanish) Enhanced Resident Services Coordinator and a new wraparound service specialist, and a Volunteer Program Manager to help us mobilize our volunteers to help isolated seniors and low-income adults access services and supports during the pandemic. We now have a wraparound case manager in resident services, and 5 additional staff as part of our direct services team, providing support in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Ukrainian & Belarusian languages to interface with the many immigrant clients we serve.

Our growth goals in the 2-year grant period include more diversity within all levels of the organization and operationalization of an equity plan that is evaluated regularly and utilized for measurement of success.

60%

of our staff and board at CFPA are seniors

95%

of all volunteers with our organization are seniors

60%+

of volunteers identify as having a disability

Our Senior Advisory Council, a senior empowerment council representing and striving to be reflective of the greater community, is 100% senior run with 10% people of color, 10% immigrant or refugee, 70% people with disabilities and 10% LGBTQ.

We take this opportunity to thank the original caretakers of this land.

We acknowledge the land on which we sit and which we occupy at The Community for Positive Aging rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area (Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable, 2018).

To learn more about Portland’s diverse and vibrant Native community, please read Leading with Tradition, a document created by the Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable.

We recognize the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Sovereignty arises from Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, belonging to each Indigenous nation, tribe, first nation, and communities. It consists of spiritual ways, culture, language, social and legal systems, political structures, and inherent relationships with lands, waters and all that is upon them. Indigenous sovereignty exists regardless of what the nation-state does or does not do. It continues as long as the People that are a part of it continue. What is: Indigenous Sovereignty and Tribal Sovereignty.

Indigenous Peoples are the traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. We acknowledge that we occupy the lands of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and other tribes.

CFPA commits to taking the following actions:

  • We will challenge and reject all stereotypes about Indigenous People. We will resist and challenge settler colonialism as a structural system.

  • We commit to learning accurate histories, cultures, and contemporary lives of the Indigenous People whose territories we occupy.

  • We will inform ourselves about issues impacting the local Indigenous communities and speak up.

  • We will insist that Indigenous Sovereignty be respected and upheld.

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To recognize the land is an expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory we reside on, and a way of honoring the Indigenous people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial. It is important to understand the long-standing history that has brought us to reside on the land, and to seek to understand our place within that history. Land acknowledgement does not exist in a past tense, or historical context: colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation. Colonial settlers who invaded and still occupy this land disrupted Indigenous societies and deployed all forms of violence to eliminate the first peoples. In acknowledging the painful history of genocide and ongoing attempted cultural erasure of Indigenous People, we have a responsibility to take action.