Opening Doors for Native Children: Partnering with Future Generations Collaborative

Chenoa Landry is working to open a new set of doors. Renderings drafted, permits filed, a contractor on site. It is an ordeal. It is also exciting to watch it unfold.

Chenoa is Education Mode Lead for the Future Generations Collaborative, which brings together Native-serving and Native-specific organizations, institutions, governments, and community members around a shared commitment to the health and wellbeing of Native people in Portland. SVP Portland entered a multi-year partnership with FGC in 2025 to support the childcare and preschool center her team is working to open in March 2027.

Native families in Portland have few options for early learning rooted in their own culture and community. The center is built to be one. A place where Native children spend their earliest years surrounded by their language, their traditions, and people who know them. It will sit at the heart of a tiny-home community FGC is building called Barbie's Village.

How Barbie's Village Began

Atwai Barbie Jackson Shields, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, was one of FGC's first Natural Helpers, and she carried the work into the community. After she unexpectedly passed in 2017 due to a brain aneurysm, the people around her set out to honor what she had given them. They envisioned a place where Native families could access stable housing, early childhood services, medical and dental care, and community-based support. Several years later, the Leaven Land and Housing Coalition approached FGC about the old Laurelhurst Presbyterian Church on 33rd. The church had decided to return its land to the Native community but had not yet found a partner organization. After over three years of conversations and community building with the church and neighbors, the Presbytery of the Cascades voted to gift it to FGC, and in March 2024 the land came back home.

The early childhood center in Barbie's Village is the focus of FGC's partnership with SVP Portland. Families who find stable housing there will also find childcare and preschool.

Rendering courtesy of Future Generations Collaborative and Hennebery Eddy Architects and Danae Sakuma (Umatilla descendent)..

The Work Underway

Renovation is happening. The contractor is on board, the drawings are finished, and the team is working through permitting. FGC continues to raise capital for the full village, and a recent fundraiser went toward the tiny homes planned alongside the early childhood center.

SVP Investor Partner Joanne Luzietti serves as Lead Partner, working with Chenoa and the FGC team on project planning while connecting them to licensing and curriculum experts in SVP's network. Investor Partner Diana Daibes joined the team to support project management and strategic planning.

"Mapping out how all the pieces of Barbie's Village fit together, with early childhood at the center, has been incredibly meaningful work," Diana said. "I'm excited to see the next phase come to life."

Chenoa credits both. Joanne as an ally who wraps in experts and support, and Diana for countless hours of foundation work. With their guidance, she says, she feels far more prepared to open the doors.

The learning runs both directions.

"The vision that FGC has for its center is incredible, and Chenoa's persistence should be a model to us all," Joanne said. "In particular, I think we will all have much to learn from how they are considering the overall wellness of their community, from preschool and childcare to food abundance and housing. It has been a true privilege to learn along with Chenoa and her team."

What Comes Next

An operating plan to finish. Tuition and scholarship structures to set. A Center Director to hire. Then classrooms filled with Native children, learning in a place made for them, inside a village built to hold their families too.

Chenoa and her team have been carrying this work. SVP Portland is glad to be walking the rest of the way with them.