The Brigade participated in the Hack for Portland schools hosted by Wieden & Kennedy last weekend at PIE. The goal was to find ways to drive support for local schools from the 85% of Portland residents without children. We teamed up with our friend Dietrich Ayala from Mozilla, teacher Sam Leach and the head of IT for the Portland School District to lay out the framework for a platform that enables teachers and schools to create projects and raise funds/resources. At the end of the day 8 groups presented ideas to mayor Sam Adams and the superintendent of portland public schools. Check our highlights with ways your can get involved below:

Sam Leach: We were really inspired by local teacher Sam Leach’s approach to teaching and parent/teacher communication through social media. Follow him on his blog here

CitySync Data: Open source city data that can be used to create apps/resources to help our community.

Schoolhouse Supplies: Providing free supplies to Portland teachers. Donate time and or supplies here.

Donors Choose Portland: Check out some great projects you can fund within the Portland school district.

Portland Education Organizations: W+K put together a list of all orgs in Portland helping public schools available on the Funny Monkey blog.

Mayor Sam Adams kicking it all off

Brigade Design Director, Ben Fogarty begins the brainstorm with Teacher Sam Leach

The Brigade Account Director Zeke Howard, Mozilla’s Dietrich Ayala, and Brigade Engineering Director, Chris Jones, forge an alliance