Gala for Boys and Girls Club
The boys and Girls Club of Western Lane County has announced their Gala for 2022. The date for the event is Saturday October 8th. Executive Director Vanessa Buss is signing up businesses for sponsorships for the biggest fund raiser of the year for the club. There will be dinner and an auction. Buss says they have some items already but are currently looking for more items for the auction.
“we’ve got a few but anybody that’s offering –a lot of our big ones for like silent auction if there’s businesses that would like to promote their business and provide us with a basket and the team and I will be hitting the streets here pretty soon in the next couple of days so if you’re out there and don’t want us in the door, you better lock them now.”
The Club’s goal is to raise $125,000.00 dollars for programs and expenses. Buss promises an evening of entertainment, great food, live music and entertainment. Individual tickest are 100.00 and a table of 8 is $700.00.
Food Bank
September is National Hunger Action Month, highlighting the ways people can get involved to fight food insecurity. Susannah Morgan, head of Oregon Food Bank, says hunger was a problem in the state before the pandemic. But in the midst of COVID-19’s grip, one in five Oregonians faced food insecurity. Although numbers have gone down, she notes that more than a million residents in the state sought emergency food assistance from the Oregon Food Bank network in 2021. Morgan says a number of factors are contributing to food insecurity right now.
“Driven by structural problems in wages, access to affordable housing, access to affordable health care, access to education, and exacerbated by inflation and high cost of fuel, food and other necessities.”
Morgan says federal assistance to address hunger during the pandemic is slowly decreasing but adds that the state hasn’t reached a cliff that would drive even larger numbers of families into a precarious position. On Wednesday, Morgan held her State of Hunger address to kick off the month.
COVID-19
There are 20 new cases of COVID-19 in the Florence Area since the numbers were reported last week. 1963 is the new all time total. The Florence Events Center concluded their bi-monthly testing and vaccination clinic yesterday and will have another on the 14th of September. The CDC is also hopeful that the new vaccinations will be available. The boosters received approval from the Food and Drug Administration even though Moderna and Pfizer are still undergoing human testing for the new shots that will target more specifically the BA-4 and BA-5 strains of the virus. But they have also been tweaked to better fight all strains. It will likely still be several weeks before the shots are doled out in Oregon as the vaccines have to pass specific protocol with the OHA and a medical coalition of states in the Northwest.