By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
News Editor
October 29, 2007

The Next Door is looking to open new doors.

A new director, Janet Hamada, is guiding the nonprofit agency as it seeks to both consolidate and expand.

Consolidating into one place the three Hood River locations housing The Next Door’s social service programs, and expanding the nonprofit’s visibility, are the agency’s two dominant goals, according to Hamada, who became director in September.

“It will be wonderful to consolidate our operations, and increase collaboration and communication within our agency, and to increase our visibility in the community,” she said. NDI currently works out of 212 Second St., and has its administration offices at 202 Oak St. Klahre House, which provides services to teenagers in foster care, is located at 11th and May streets on the Heights.

“Our whole plan is to get together,” Hamada said. NDI is looking at several existing structures to move into, or a parcel of land to purchase. Needed are 2.5 acres, room enough for a 30,000-square-foot structure and some surrounding space. Hamada said she hopes to identify a location within 6-12 months, and then start a capital campaign based on the cost of the chosen facility or location.

Though Hamada is the new NDI director, she is no newcomer to Next Door, having served since June 2004 as manager of one of the agency’s programs, Nuestra Communidad Sana.

Succeeding Hamada at Nuestra Communidad Sana is its longtime program supervisor, Claudia Montana; NDI is looking for a successor to Montana.

Hamada studied at Wesleyan University and University of Washington, where she earned her Master of Social Work degree in 1994. She worked with Cuban refugees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Miami, and in Chicago for a community-based nonprofit on the impoverished west side of the city, and in Seattle with Children’s Home Society.

Hamada said the needs of people in urban and rural settings are not all that different. In the Gorge, Hamada said Next Door serves “a diverse group,” based on ethnicity as well as particular social needs. For example, she said many people may not realize that the NDI foster program serves many children who have been placed here from elsewhere in the state.

Among the migrant and settled farm worker population, “There are also generations of the same families that have been here and have so many ongoing needs,” Hamada said. “It’s apparent in all the counties we serve.”

For all her work and study in places urban and remote, the Hood River valley “is a part of me,” Hamada said.

“I spent much of my childhood here. Hamada said.

Hamada grew up in urban Chicago but often visited her grandparents, the late Horace and Maki Hamada, at their Hood River orchard. Her uncle, Dr. Paul Hamada, was NDI’s first medical director when the agency was founded in 1971.

“My goal is to make sure people in the community really understand what we do, and the benefits of having us in the community,” Hamada said. “There are a lot of programs that could not succeed. We try not to use the term ‘umbrella,’ because it sounds sort of administrative when in fact we reach thousands of people each year.”