Volunteering opportunity: seed library assistant

Wanted: Seed Library Assistant 
(volunteer, part-time: 4 hours per week) 

The Growing Ester's Biodiversity program is looking for a dedicated volunteer interested in improving food security, democracy, and sovereignty in the Interior and Alaska through preserving and increasing agrobiodiversity.

Duties include: assistance in maintaining and organizing collections, publicity for GEB program events, online database updates, working with other organizations both local and statewide to foster other seed libraries and seed exchanges and to create a state seed library network, and to help maintain higher profile in northern and other seed library networks to take advantage of help and useful information. 

The volunteer will work with the GEB program director to plan and conduct workshops and create handouts and other information as needed.

Contact: geb@esterlibrary.org

Double Your Dividend Sweepstakes

Donating to one’s favorite nonprofit groups, including the John Trigg Ester Library, through the Pick.Click.Give. program, may be a lot more lucrative this year—for ten people collecting PFDs! the Pick.Click.Give. program is a part of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend application designed to increase charitable giving in Alaska, and now 10 lucky Alaskans who donate through Pick.Click.Give. will win through the Double Your Dividend Sweepstakes, announced on Tuesday, March 4.

Here’s how the Sweepstakes works: Those Alaskans who choose to make a Pick.Click.Give. donation to one of the more than 500 qualifying 501(c)(3) Alaska nonprofit organizations (among them 24 libraries and library friends organizations, including the JTEL) when they file their PFD application will be entered into the sweepstakes. All non-anonymous donations made before the PFD application due date of March 31 will count for the sweepstakes. If you've already donated, but anonymously, you can go back in and choose to donate publicly, and become eligible. On Sept. 15, the names of 10 lucky Alaskans will be drawn and the winners will be announced on Oct. 1. The complete rules can be found here, at www.pickclickgive.org/index.cfm/double-your-dividend/.

One of the reasons for the sweepstakes is a technical glitch in January that prevented a lot of Alaskans from being able to make Pick.Click.Give. donations when they filed their PFD applications. The sweepstakes is an incentive to get those Alaskans who didn’t make Pick.Click.Give. donations to go back into their PFD applications and add some. The 2014 PFDs should be much bigger than the PFDs from the last couple of years, which makes this a great time to share the wealth with nonprofit organizations in your communities.

This is the first year the John Trigg Ester Library has participated in the Pick.Click.Give. program, which allows people to donate in $25 increments to their favorite statewide and local nonprofit organizations. When you choose to donate part of your PFD to the JTEL, you support our operations, our endowment, our capital campaign, and our educational programs, which include a winter lecture series on history, science, art, writing, geography, and much more, as well as a seed library program that hosts seed swaps, seedsaving workshops, and a seed collection for checkout.

The Pick.Click.Give. program is available only to people who file their PFD applications on line, and not to those who file by mail. Even though you can’t file a new PFD application after March 31, you can go in to your application and update your Pick.Click.Give. donations through Aug. 31 (but you won’t be entered into the sweepstakes unless you make a donation before March 31).

If you aren’t from Alaska or aren’t eligible for a 2014 PFD, you still can donate to JTEL by sending a check to PO Box 468, Ester AK 99725. Our EIN is 27-1297959. Please let us know if you need a receipt for tax purposes. For more information about the library, please contact us at info@esterlibrary.org.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF3av66fXE8

Bryce Wrigley on starting a new business in agriculture

Wednesday's library lecture will feature Bryce Wrigley, a dynamic speaker and enthusiastic supporter of a strong local food network. His topic will be on the lessons he learned in starting his flour mill, the Alaska Flour Company. As usual, the talk will be at Hartung Hall at 7 pm. Parking will be available at the hall and at the library's Clausen Cabin (3629 Main Street).

Wrigley will also be speaking on campus earlier in the day on creating a local food system.