Click for our project

Update: We just barely missed this by 0.1% !! Thanks for all of your votes!

I’ve been watching the sustainable clothing company Nau ever since they first sent one of their employees up to Seattle for a story on the female parkour scene way back in v1 days. I was impressed with their dedication to giving back they built into every faucet of the company and the amount of great local giving they did (especially back in the beginning of their partners for change program).

So when I noticed them launching their first community grant I enthusiastically jumped in feet first and have already hit the ground running so to speak. Through the awesome help of the American Parkour community we’re already almost at the 100 vote minimum mark before this post is finished! APK has been so fast to action and giving in fact that we’re finalizing a potentially fantastic relationship with them shortly (more on that later).

We need your vote!

If we win we’ll receive $10,000 to put towards our own training center for our academy classes and Jump Washington outreach program, and all we need to be considered is a place in the publicly voted top 5.

There’s 293 other groups in the running and voting ends August 31st so please visit the link below and give us a high rating (5 stars)! More info on helping spread this campaign and win the grant in our resource doc.

http://www.nau.com/collective/grant-for-change/tyson-cecka-1026.html

The problem is that every bit of time we have right is focused on running the outreach programs (which we’re considering calling the Jump Washington project) and finding our own gym space for our regular academy classes. A redesign of the web site just hasn’t been possible.

Rafe got tired of that though and created the amazing logo you see above Consider this an open call for any graphic designers who want to volunteer and work with us on a new logo!

So, we’re trying to think of ways to make our program “not just another program” that the kids participate in and then forget about when they go back to their own environments and personal lives: We want to inspire them. We want them to find their own inspiration inside of themselves. We want to give them hope. We want them to make their own hope. We want to give them tools like social skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, and conflict resolution skills…and we want them to learn these skills without even realizing it through enrichingly fun and awesome activities!!

LIKE PARKOUR.

We were hoping on being able to use the profits from our general classes to fund these types of reduced cost or free outreach programs, but while the classes are growing rapidly they’re not to that point yet (we’re hoping to move into our space this month which will help).

So we reached out to the parkour community by teaming up with AmericanParkour (more on that later) and entered into a fundraising competition on the excellent GlobalGiving site to subsidize the cost for future programs. That was near the beginning of last month…and it worked We’ve raised over $4,500 with your help so far, earned a permanent place on the GlobalGiving website, and are already being featured in another competition this month for sports organizations called Ready, Set, GIVE.

We’re very excited but have a crazy amount of work to do now, so the site may get a bit quiet We’ll make sure to update those who’ve donated through GG (even $10 helps!) as often as we can, and for everyone else – spread the word!

Train safe,
-Tyson

Confluence Creative team Joshua B. Johnson and Bridget O’Neill pair up with members of Parkour Visions to bring you Parkour For The People. Emerging on the streets of Europe, taking names on YouTube and leaping onto the big screen, Parkour has an underground appeal the world over. But it’s here in Seattle we found a tight knit group of Tracuers working together to make Parkour accessible to the masses. The Pacific Northwest Parkour Association, or Parkour Visions, is a not-for-profit designed to get people of all ages outside and moving. Experienced Traceurs teach students the fundamentals through classes, training exercises, and strength building activities. If you would like to give Parkour a try, you can find more information at www.parkourvisions.org. Special thanks to: Green Lake Park, Gas Works Park, Tyson Cecka, Rafe Kelley, Brandee Laird, Janine Cundy, and Adam Truesdell

If you like the piece head over to SeattleIAM and vote it onto the frontpage so we can get this stuff spread!

The reason this is so important is that we are now eligible for tax deductible donations, most goverment and federal grants, support from other likeminded NPOs and corporations, and most importantly it shows our commitment to serving the parkour community through our projects and initiatives!

More to come! For now if you want to help you can donate directly through google checkout or contact us to find out what you can do.

We met at the amazing Powell’s books in downtown Portland, a throwback to the last time we met there almost four years ago at the very start of would eventually become ORPK (back when I was still in highschool in the area, before moving to Seattle). We had a very diverse group of traceurs there with two of them even remaining from the old group. I think I ended up stealing most of the discussion by talking on and on for a few hours straight, but we did manage to discuss a bit about where Oregon is currently and what Parkour Visions may be able to do to help to get them where they want to be.

All it all I think it went well and It was so great seeing all of the guys again. Hopefully this means I’ll be heading down there more often, Portland is such an amazing city for Parkour! If anyone is in the area and wants to contribute to ORPK‘s “making things happen” group, let me know!