Sustainable Overlook was started as committee of the Overlook Neighborhood Association (OKNA) in North Portland, Oregon. We were founded in 2010 by former OKNA board member Leslee Lewis, with a group of neighbors serving with her on the steering committee: Alice Busch, Josh Cabot and Mulysa Melco. Over the years, we have benefited from the help of dozens of active volunteers, in addition to the support of hundreds of neighbors and nearby citizens.
Over the past decade, Sustainable Overlook has sought to bring neighbors together to spark ground-up action around ecology, economy, equity and resilience, manifesting in summits, film series, garden tours, seed swaps, yard sales, and clean-ups. Pesticide Free Overlook was also born out of these efforts, encouraging people to find alternatives to the use of pesticides in their own yards. To date, this has been one of the first and most successful neighborhood-scale efforts to eliminate pesticide use ever undertaken in the country.
Would you like to get involved? We welcome volunteers, donations, questions or ideas! Email us at sustainable@overlookneighborhood.org