Ever wanted to help others feel beautiful? With a beauty course at a new multicultural esthetics school, you can. Champions Beauty Institute, located at 424 NE Killingsworth, is Portland’s first multiculturally owned, influenced and led esthetics program. It offers training on beauty services for all skin types and its first cohort of students began the program in February.

Jamal and Christina Lane spent seven years learning barbering and launched Champions Barbering Institute earlier this year. The curriculum prepares students to have their own businesses and provides mentorship before and after obtaining certification.

The program is designed so students can keep their obligations to jobs and family; classes run two evenings and Saturdays for 28 weeks. The cost of the program is $15,000 with $4,000 scholarships available. The curriculum includes treatments such as facials, waxing, the use of facial devices, chemical peels, hair removal, makeup, lash tinting, brow tinting, lift and extensions and also provides certification in eyelash extension, lamination, sugaring, and dermaplaning, a treatment to treat deep acne scars.

Concordian Amantha Hood of Lash Lab PDX is the Lead Educator at Champion. Hood holds a B.A. in Mass Communication and Media Studies from Linfield College. After graduating from college, she obtained her esthetic certificate and license in 2018 and has been working in the industry since then.

A woman of color, Hood realized there was a lack of training in the industry on multicultural differences and a lack of treatments serving people of color.

“Champion is filling an equity gap in esthetics curriculum standards. By molding and graduating students educated in all skin types, we increase the number of estheticians that can confidently service all of Portland’s population. It starts with this program, but my hope is to eventually influence the standards for curriculum requirements statewide, and nationally. It should be a requirement that students know how to consult, service and educate clients in all skin types in the field of esthetics,” says Hood.

Of the Champion program, Hood says, “Our students learn how to confidently service melanin-rich skin, atypical to most curriculums. As Oregon’s first multiculturally driven esthetics program, we are setting a new standard in what it means to be a licensed esthetician.”

After living east, south, north and west, Marsha Sandman is home at last. And she wants to hear your story. Contact her at MarshaJSandman@gmail.com.

For this month’s photo feature, we learned firsthand how newspapers are printed.

Every month, the media team at Concordia News finalizes the layout of the newspaper and sends it for printing. Blake Jensen is the Operations Manager at Pamplin in Gresham, where the majority of Concordia News editions have been printed.

“The printing process has changed very little in 70 years,” says Jensen.

Posts such as this are frequent on Concordia neighborhood social media groups, when animals (mostly dogs and sometimes cats) are found in parks and neighbor- hoods. These animals pull at our heart strings and elicit a slurry of responses from concerned neighbors.

What steps should be taken when finding a lost animal? Multnomah County Animal Shelter (MCAS) employee Jay LeVitre helps answer this and other questions: if you find a dog without an owner, you have a few options. You can carry a leash and try to capture the dog yourself. If that doesn’t feel safe, you can call Troutdale- based MCAS at (503) 988-7387 and an officer will come to help capture the dog. If you want to care for the captured dog at home (instead of bringing it to MCAS), follow the steps explained on the MCAS website at multcopets.org/found-pet.

If the dog does not have a tag, you can take the dog to a vet to have it scanned for a microchip; a free service that all vets provide. MCAS also recommends filling out a found report on their website and sharing information on local social media groups, such as Next Door, Buy Nothing, Being Neighborly, PawBoost, and Petco Love Lost. If you want to keep the dog you find, there is a 180-day waiting period to allow time to find its owner.

According to Levitre, MCAS takes in 12-16 animals every day. More animals tend to get lost in summer, versus winter months because in summer, people spend more time outside with their animals, leave animals in the yard or have windows open in the house where animals can escape.

Since the decline of the pandemic, shelters have experienced a “10-year high” in numbers of animals both locally and nationally and, Levitre thinks this is due to “a direct correlation between economics and high numbers, particu- larly due to housing instability.”

When an animal comes to MCAS, it is first checked for a license and then goes through a brief intake process to collect information used for a found report. An animal with a license is held for six business days during which every effort is made to contact and find the owner. After six days (or three days without a license), shelter staff evaluate the animal. It is then either readied for adoption, put in foster care, or transferred to another shelter, such as the Oregon Humane Society. Of the 300 or so total animals MCAS currently has in its care (dogs, cats, rabbits and other species), about 150 of them are in foster care.

For dogs and puppies that were found between July 2022-June 2023, 33% were adopted, 45% were returned to their owners, 13% were transferred to other agencies or rescues and 9% were either euthanized or died in care, LeVitre says.

On a recent tour of MCAS, led by long-time volunteer and now employee Bud Garrison, the compact shelter was bustling with activity. Volunteers were carefully folding recently-washed blankets and walking dogs on nearby tree-lined trails, animal care staff were conducting wellness checks with new arrivals, and an MCAS officer was preparing to go on patrol. Bright, colorful dog toys lay neatly stacked in piles and a refrigerator was packed with care- fully prepared Kong toys stuffed with cottage cheese, peanut butter or pureed pumpkin.

“Volunteers are the heart and soul of the MCAS operation and we could not function well without them,“ says LeVitre.

If you are interested in helping dogs in Multnomah County, consider volun- teering at MCAS. More information can be found at multcopets.org on the “Volunteer at the Shelter”page.

Jordana Leeb is a longtime Concordia resident who i s passionate about the neighborhood, its residents and trees. She lives with her partner and rescue dog (found as a stray) on a street she calls home. You can see a film about her street and Concordia at TinyURL.com/Diaryofastreet

On August 6th, 1945, the U.S. dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, hoping to end World War II. The city was destroyed, all the trees were blackened and scorched, and locals were told that nothing could grow there for 75 years.

But the next spring, about 170 trees started leafing out. They came to be known as hibakujumoku; “survivor trees,” and the city of Hiroshima appointed arborist Chikara Horiguchi to care for them.

“About 15 years ago, a group of Hiroshima residents began to collect seeds from these aging trees,” Jim Gersbach, Public Affairs Specialist for the Oregon Department of Forestry, tells the story. “The seeds were sorted, cleaned and packaged at the Hiroshima Botanical Garden by volunteers and then distributed to some 40 countries.” Gersbach lives in Concordia and helped facilitate the Hiroshima Peace Trees project with Green Legacy Hiroshima, the nonprofit that was created for the cause.

Gersbach also serves as a board member for Oregon Community Trees (OCT), a non-profit aimed at promoting healthy urban forests. OCT took on the project of distributing the Hiroshima Peace Trees and Gersbach suggested offering the trees to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The trees were first offered to official Tree City USA communities, cities that met stringent criteria to be considered tree-friendly. There are about 70 in Oregon, and close to half of them wanted a peace tree. Today the state of Oregon has the densest concentration of Hiroshima Peace Trees outside of Japan.

53 gingko and persimmon saplings were successfully germinated by fellow OCT board member Mike Oxendine. The saplings were given at no cost but recipients were required to plant the trees in public places and hold public ceremonies. Most ceremonies were postponed during the pandemic and when they could finally take place, took on many different forms. Sometimes city mayors or school superintendents gave speeches, poets read works, taiko drummers drummed or traditional koto musicians played, or local school children gave presentations.

By last year, Gersbach, some of his fellow OCT board members, and Kristin Ramstad at the Oregon Dept. of Forestry had found homes for all of the trees. To date, 49 entities in more than 3 dozen Oregon communities have planted peace trees. They are located at city parks, schools, botanical gardens, arboretums, cemeteries, and churches. Portland has three; two at Hoyt Arboretum, and one at Portland State University.

And the trees mean different things to different communities. Umpqua Community College in Roseburg planted one on the site of the 2015 school shooting there. The city of Talent held its tree ceremony shortly after the September 2020 Almeda fire. Many Japanese-American families in Oregon trace their ancestry to emigrants from Hiroshima, so there were also plantings by Japanese-Americans in Hood River, Ontario and Klamath Falls.

“These trees are venerated because they are resilient survivors,” says Gersbach. “Each of these trees is an ambassador of peace. No one in the wake of the war and tragedy of Hiroshima expected Japan and the U.S. to become friends. But even bitter enemies can work to become friends.”

In November, Gersbach visited Hiroshima to thank Green Legacy Hiroshima staff for sending their seeds to Oregon and to visit the two survivor trees that were parents of the ones now growing in Oregon. A filmmaker named David Hedberg joined Gersbach on the trip and is hoping to create a documentary about this project called “Seeds of Peace”. It should be completed in time for the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in 2025. Stay posted for information on a viewing in Concordia.

Dina Sage is the Managing Editor for CNews and enjoys engaging in the arts and outdoor activities. She lives with her husband, daughter and their pets.