OEC Partners With Hacienda CDC to Expand Access To Eco-Healthy Home Kit
The average American spends 90% of their time indoors, and this has only increased for Oregonians during the winter months with the new COVID-related shutdown restrictions across the state. How do you maintain your home to protect against viruses, while also minimizing the amount of toxic chemicals you come across in cleaning products in a healthy, affordable manner?
OEC has partnered with Hacienda CDC, a community development corporation that provides affordable housing for Portland’s LatinX community, to help provide tailored solutions to those challenges. We know that people of color and low-income communities are disproportionately exposed and affected by toxics in consumer products and outside sources. And, we believe it should not cost anyone an arm and a leg to obtain environmentally healthy, non-toxic, and sustainable cleaning and personal care products.
The partnership between Hacienda CDC and OEC seeks to jointly identify toxic threats in home and personal care products, identify affordable non-toxic alternatives, and identify barriers to obtaining these alternatives.

The setup!
As part of this pilot project, OEC worked with Hacienda CDC to host focus groups and conduct surveys in Spanish and English with Hacienda’s residents. The intent was to listen to what would be the most effective and helpful for our most vulnerable communities to minimize the use of toxic chemicals, and what non-toxic products they were most interested in obtaining.
We jointly developed an affordable and easy eco-healthy home guides in English and Spanish that provided effective recipes and tips to disinfect your home and treat your skin. And just in time for the holidays, on Thursday evening, OEC, Hacienda CDC, and our intern from Portland State University organized a socially-distanced event (complete with appointments) to pass out food donations and 75 eco-healthy home kits with non-toxic ingredients/supplies to complement the home guides.n without the use of harsh chemicals.

Kits all ready to go!
The event was a success, and we plan to check in with the residents who participated in this program later in the New Year!