Social work

Spring 2015

Liz Siler ’78—Hungry to help

Around the back of the Pullman Safeway, a shopping cart emerges through an unmarked door. A man in a stocking cap pushes a precarious load of bakery items to the minivan waiting by the curb. Moments later, he returns with a second cart. Then a third.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning, Liz Siler ’78 and her cart-steering husband Pat ’61 load their van nearly to the roof with day-old loaves of generic and artisan bread, hot dog buns, cakes, muffins, bagels, croissants, and chocolate Cutie Pies.

Destined for Pullman’s Community Action Center Food Bank, the donations will replenish the shelves in the “bread room” for … » More …

Summer 2014

Hunger Immortal: The First Thirty Years of the West Seattle Food Bank, 1983–2013

Ronald F. Marshall ’71

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

What is today the West Seattle Food Bank started as a shoestring operation in an abandoned public school building. A pair of retired grocers from South Dakota had taken on responsibility for distributing government commodities like cheese and peanut butter to needy community members.

Thirty years later, the food bank owns its own building, serves an average of 750 families a week, and … » More …

Winter 2013

Battered Women, Their Children, and International Law

Taryn Lindhorst ’84 and Jeffrey L. Edleson

Northern University Press, 2013

The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction ruled that any child taken from one parent by another across international borders must be returned to their home country for custody to be properly and legally determined. While this saves parents who are victims of child abduction, it doesn’t account for those, especially women, who felt the need to emigrate to free … » More …

Winter 2012

No Room of Her Own: Women’s Stories of Homelessness, Life, Death, and Resistance

Desiree Hellegers

Palgrave Macmillan

2011

“As a form of social punishment, homelessness is far sterner in many respects than sentences handed out in court for most criminal offenses,” writes Desiree Hellegers, an associate professor of English and founding co-director of the Center for Social and Environmental Justice at WSU Vancouver, in her introduction. In presenting the individual stories of 15 women in Seattle collected over two decades, Hellegers offers a view … » More …

Summer 2012

Doing good through blending

About three years ago, Monte Regier returned to Seattle from a year working on the hospital ship Anastasis off the coast of Liberia. Suffering from culture shock, remembering friends who go to bed hungry every night, he sat with his friend Martin Barrett over a glass of wine and mused on what a dollar would buy.

And then came the Idea.

“You know, Monte,” said Barrett, “I think this glass of wine could feed a kid for a day.”

One can imagine Regier’s skeptical smile.

“Give me 90 days,” said Barrett.

So Barrett started researching this idea of selling wine to feed kids and convinced … » More …

Fall 2011

Billions Served

Seven billion people will soon become nine billion before the global population levels off. Can so many people be fed from a finite Earth? Yes, they can, say WSU researchers. But the solutions will necessarily be many.

» More ...

Summer 2011

A Home for Every Child

Patricia Susan Hart ’91 MA, ’97 PhD

Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest with University of Washington, 2010

At the end of the 19th century, adoption became part of a broader movement to reform the orphanage and poor farm system in the United States. In her most recent book, Patricia Susan Hart, who teaches journalism and American studies at the University of Idaho, looks at the issue of child placement in Washington. The book … » More …

Summer 2010

Time Out in the World

Today's graduates aren't just dropping into the rat race. They're going to Africa, South America, Seattle and Spokane. They're out to see the world and make a difference. » More ...