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editor's note

Hi suma friends,

We’ve had a pretty wild last month (hence the big gap in time between newsletters), but the team is catching our breath. Amid the busyness, we were glad to add our new, ambitious team member Raissa Renee Lyles to the mix. The team worked together to bid on two scopes of the E-Bike RFP from the Portland Clean Energy Fund, so put out the good vibes for us. We just wrapped up our Farmers Market season and in the same week, launched our third year of our Holiday Special offering.

Thanks for keeping up!

-Jacqueline

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suma milestones

Welcome aboard, Raissa Renee!

We’re stoked to introduce our new Platform Organizer, Raissa Renee Lyles! Lucky for us, Raissa has experience in everything related to communications. Previously, at AfroVillage PDX, Raissa was the Director of Communications and Operations where she grew her strategic communications skills and her passion for community-driven work blossomed. In her new role, Raissa will work on building and maintaining our relationships with partners as well as engaging with suma users and their communities.

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community catch-up

RFP: PCEF Strategic Program 6 – Comprehensive E-Bike Access and Support

This City of Portland Request for Proposals was released October 28. The 5-year RFP aims to get 6000 e-bikes on the street through community engagement, e-bike rebates, and a new adaptive e-bike program. It’s another opportunity to fulfill PCEF's commitment to community-led, community-benefiting climate action. In response, suma is excited to share that we bid on two RFP scopes: Central Program Administrator, and Rebate Payment and Application Processing:

• Central Program Administrator. The CPA is PCEF’s key partner in building an inclusive, community-powered e-bike access and support program with low-income people, people of color, adults with disability and other PCEF priority populations.
• Rebate Payment and Application Processing. The RPP is PCEF’s key technology partner, building and managing the program's applicant and voucher systems.

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suma app

Market Wrap-Up

November 24th marked our official last day of the 2024 Farmers Market season! We had such a great turn out of new users and we’re elated with the number of new people that joined the suma community!

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This season we had the pleasure of adding Lents International Farmers Market to our list of markets where folks can stretch their dollar using the suma app! We’re so thankful to Portland Farmers Market for welcoming us in and being great partners to work with.

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We also wanted to give a special thank you to the team at the St. Johns Farmers Market for being supportive throughout the years of our market endeavors! We got the pleasure of sharing a booth with the sweet folks at their information booth for this season and loved working in collaboration with them.

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Holiday Special

Suma is in our third year of the Holiday Special and launched the offering this year with our previous vendor Sheridan’s providing our ham and turkey options, and the vegan option being provided by the local King farmers market vendor Black Girl Veggies. We sold out more quickly than we ever have, with Black Girl Veggies being sold out in 3 days!
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Additionally, suma has been working with the Portland Water Bureau to pilot utilizing subsidy dollars for specific affordable housing communities. In conjunction with this work, suma was able to offer a unique offering from Tienda Dona Maria, with the option of both a sweet, savory or combination packet of market items for a posada to the Hacienda CDC community.