In Brief

by Inlander Staff


FareStart in Town? -- SPOKANE -- People often ask whatever came out of the One Spokane Summit. Well, there's at least one person out there who's trying to do something about poverty. His name is Jeremy Street, and he's planning to open Spokane's own FareStart Restaurant.


FareStart is a nonprofit organization that teaches homeless and disadvantaged people how to turn their lives around by giving them skill-building jobs in the program's restaurant.


Street says he has been homeless himself. After eating at the FareStart restaurant in Seattle, he grabbed a brochure because he liked the idea and thought such a restaurant would help the poverty problem here.


"I don't consider myself an activist, but I would like to promote it," Street says about undertaking the FareStart venture.


He wants to host an informational meeting in early December, and he's trying to hook up with other people who would be interested in supporting the project.


FareStart runs a 16-week program teaching marketable food service skills. In Seattle, FareStart students often live in homeless shelters, but they show up for work every day -- clean, sober, appropriately dressed and ready to go.


Street says he doesn't know if there are enough employment opportunities in Spokane for graduates of the program, but FareStart is interested in working with him on the planning of a new restaurant.


Says Street: "FareStart will teach people to have a career. The Seattle model seems to work and we are interested in cloning it."


-- Megan B. McCarthy





Volunteers can contact Jeremy Street at 235-5458. For more information on FareStart go to www.farestart.org.





Terrorism at Home -- SPOKANE -- Gonzaga University and the Spirit Talk Culture Institute, which is located on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Mont., are presenting a two-day seminar on the Indian experience of terrorism and genocide in this country.


"We are doing this now, partly in response to the country's concern over terrorism and genocide and hate," says Long Standing Bear Chief, the CEO of the Spirit Talk Culture Institute. "Everyone thinks it's the first time we have had terrorism in this county, but it has happened before and it still continues. The victims are minority people, in this case Indian people. We have to understand terrorism and genocide and create models to stop it."


The creation of these models is the goal of the two-day conference. Where Friday is dedicated to understanding definitions of terms such as terrorism and to understanding history, Saturday is set aside for participants to work on and present models in keeping with the teachings of indigenous people to end hate.


The seminar will be videotaped so that the specific plans of action to eliminate hate can be spread to a broader audience than the 80 people there's room for at Gonzaga.


-- Pia K. Hansen





The seminar, "Terrorism and Genocide: The Indian Experience," runs on Nov. 22-23 at Gonzaga's Foley Center's teleconferencing center. Cost: $20, before or at the door. Call: 323-5760.





Grants to the Rescue -- SPOKANE -- The Spokane Neighborhood Action Program (SNAP) has received two large grants within the last week.


From the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the organization has received $77,434 to go toward its mortgage assistance program.


"It basically allows us to continue to run that program," says Jon Anderson, spokesman for SNAP. "It's especially important in a market like ours, that has a staggering foreclosure rate."


The mortgage assistance program offers free classes in homebuyer education classes and foreclosure prevention, among others.


SNAP has also received a $50,000 matching grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will go toward SNAP's Individual Development Accounts (IDA) program. This program matches low-income families' savings, two to one.


"The money," says Anderson, "can be used for higher education, for a down payment on a house or for someone who wants to start some type of self-employment."


-- Pia K. Hansen





For information about the Mortgage Assistance Program, contact SNAP at 456-7106 ext. 126. For information about Individual Development Accounts, call SNAP at 456-7174.