Braiding Our Community

An Invitation to Steward Our Mission Together

Leaven is a

community of communities, rooted in justice, story, diversity, and action.

We exist to

re-weave the strands of connection that have become unraveled in today’s world.

It begins with our stories. All of them.

Together we are

Moving from isolation into radical belonging. From uncertainty into mutual accompaniment. From fear and perfectionism into restorative justice.

At Leaven Community Center in NE Portland, we share headquarters with like-minded organizations, gather for community meals, train as community organizers, and make meaning together through spiritual gatherings.

Across the state, we build transitional and affordable housing (over 500 units to date) through the Leaven Land & Housing Coalition, which organizes faith-owned land and connects us to statewide sacred organizing networks.

How We Will Do It in 2027: Three Strands, One Braid

• Nurture Story and Spirit: Revive a secular, “soulful” storytelling gathering and rekindle circles of mutual care.

• Build Resilience: Revitalize our building as an energy-efficient Community Resilience Hub and launch new volunteer teams and tools for mutual aid and relationship-building.

• Organize and Belong: Deepen our core practice of Community Organizing, train and support new leaders, and orient our community compass toward transparency and restorative justice.

To reach these goals, Leaven needs to raise an additional $40,000 from current and new stewards and utilize about 1,200 volunteer shifts in 2027.

The Binding? Stewardship.

A Leaven Steward sustains the everyday work of community at the Leaven Community Center and beyond. Stewards share their time, skills, relationships, and/or financial resources to help Leaven remain rooted, welcoming, and ready to meet our neighbors’ needs with care and collective action.

To become or recommit as a Leaven Steward, please fill out this form before our annual meeting on November 29

Uncovering Our Roots: Building a Leaven Community Land Story

Community notes from a Fall 2026 community resilience workshop

From the desk of the Director of Organizing

Dear Leaven Community,

Since September, I’ve had the privilege to support our Land Story Core Team as we wrestled with a question for our Community Resilience Hub: ‘Community resilience for whom?’ 

I’m happy to share that we’ve officially completed the 2026 written draft of our Leaven Land Story. Land stories are always living and shifting, lenses more than documents. We did our best to tell a story that could be documented, and we know our version is limited by who we are and how we came together, our learnings and also unlearnings. 

To be completely candid, our meetings were messy. As an organizer, I love planning but the thing I like most about organizing is the stories we couldn’t predict. This process forced us to bring our inadequate, complicated selves to the table. We didn’t just read historical timelines; we sat in circles and shared our own migration stories, our heartbreaks, and what home has meant to each of us. 

As we dug into the hidden history of this land’s past - the corner of 20th and Killingsworth, but also the greater place of what is now known as North & NE Portland - we cycled through sadness and grief reminding ourselves of the traumas & resilience of people around us impacted by the 1948 Vanport flood. We felt collective rage tracing how the wealth allowing us to be here now was rooted in unceded Indigenous land, and also how the 1952 Redeemer Lutheran church cornerstone rose right as legal redlining was locking Black and brown neighbors out of this neighborhood.

We even had to look in the mirror and hold the complexity of our own modern history. We grappled with the vanished dream of the 2007 Redeemer Lutheran affordable housing project that fell through, and how our subsequent land sales to market-rate developers—while funding the birth of the Leaven Project—ultimately fed the very gentrification that pushed Black families out of Vernon.

There was joy at what led to who we are now, and hope that the values of Leaven’s forebears have threaded through until even this very day, showing us pathways forward. 

As we wrapped up our final evaluation, we found some new clarity. One of our team members said something that has stayed with me: 'We can't unsee. It's uncovered. It's there.' We realized that while we can’t change what was done to and upon this land, we now wield the power of awareness. 

We can refuse to repeat the misaligned intents of the past. 

We can stand on core values and accountability to ourselves and our neighbors. 

This brings me to my invitation to you.

This land story belongs to all of us, and it’s a beginning. We only managed a handful of one-to-one conversations, and we refuse to let it become a static, performative piece of paper. We need your stories, your inputs, and your history to keep building this ongoing story. 

Story is - after all - the fabric of Leaven. 

We are currently hoping to design a set of dynamic Community Land Story Gatherings. Think of them as living exhibits winding through our community—from the threshold of Time Immemorial to a more Resilient Future Horizon of who we are becoming. We want you to walk through the land and its story with us, to see what we saw, and to help us continue to build on the answers to how our future as Leaven can truly practice our values. To learn from our history. To live with accountability at our core.

Keep an eye out as we prepare to invite the broader Leaven, our Building Vision team, and our neighborhood. We cannot wait to share this space, these hard truths, and this beautiful horizon of repair with you. 

With fierce gratitude,

Jules and the 2025/2026 Leaven Core Team ( Jennifer Elting, Schuyler Halsey, Marin Hart, Tom Martin, Bob Robison, and Dan Slowey)

What we want in a Resilience Hub

Word cloud image created by the good people at Salazar Architect, LLC

This summer, Leaven Community members and neighbors gathered in a series of four workshops (including one in Spanish) and through a community survey to imagine together about what a Community Resilience Hub at Leaven could look like.

Across these engagements, three values emerged as the heart of our longings: Community Belonging, Universal Design, and Design Justice. We want spaces that are welcoming, adaptable, and rooted in care for one another.

When it came to practical needs, some themes rose again and again:

• a community kitchen where meals and stories can be shared,

• a garden that nourishes both body and spirit, and

• networks of mutual aid and childcare that help us carry one another through hard times.

Neighbors also highlighted the importance of indoor gathering areas, outdoor spaces, and basic needs support like showers, storage, and emergency shelter—resources that will make Leaven a place of safety and connection in times of both celebration and crisis. 

This feedback paints a clear picture: people want Leaven to be a hub where resilience is built through care, creativity, and community.

The team at Salazar Architect compiled what we heard at these gatherings into some simple takeaways, below. They are currently working on draft designs of the building and grounds that will be shared with the community in mid-October.Read all the way to the bottom to learn what’s coming up next in the process!

These images of gathering spaces were collaboratively selected by groups at the Leaven Resilience Hub design workshops in summer 2025. The number underneath each photo represents the number of groups (out of 13) that selected that space.

Qualitative data organized by the team at Salazar Architect

What’s next?

Our collaborators at Salazar Architect are putting together draft designs that will be shared with the community in mid-October.

Attend an upcoming workshop to provide feedback on those draft plans, which will further refine the blueprint and design to be finalized in December. 

• Sunday, October 19, 1:00-2:30 pm

• Wednesday, November 5, 7:00-8:30 pm

• Thursday, November 9, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm (for Common House partners)

• Spanish Language workshop - Date and Time TBD, stay tuned!