About Mercy Corps: Global Headquarters:

Mercy Corps Action Center

Photo: Lou Rocco for Mercy Corps

In fall 2009, when the leaves start to change color, ride the MAX downtown and get off at the Skidmore Fountain stop in Old Town Chinatown. You’ll find yourself at the front door of the Mercy Corps Action Center.

The Action Center is a window into Mercy Corps’ work. Here, visitors will get a hands-on educational experience, learning what daily life is like for people around the globe who suffer from hunger, poverty and conflict.

But the Action Center isn’t just about knowing more. We ask visitors to take learning one step further: to action. With the participation of community members and young people, the center will grow into a hub of global and local activism.

Mercy Corps is helping young people today become the citizens and leaders the world will need tomorrow.

Mercy Corps’ overarching goal is ambitious: it seeks to catalyze a movement. This interpretative center — like its companion, our Action Center to End World Hunger in New York City — is a cornerstone of our broader Global Engagement Initiative. We want to help people of all walks of life take meaningful action and, ultimately, build a dedicated movement of activists in the United States working to solve the same global challenges as does Mercy Corps.

Mercy Corps’ Global Engagement Initiative focuses specifically on young people, supporting them in their exploration of global issues and, if they are motivated, in their desire to act — to increase awareness, to raise funds, to advocate. We’re helping young people today become the citizens and leaders the world will need tomorrow.

Visit Us

Bring your children, friends and out-of-town guests to the Mercy Corps Action Center.

Stop at the Briefing Area for a video introduction to the root causes of global poverty.

At the Global Status Interactive, travel the world on a giant projected map that uses sophisticated Google Earth software. Zoom in on a country to find out what’s going on there.

Photo: Sebastian Gollings for Mercy Corps

Train for action at one of our Training Towers. Through a rich collection of videos, photos and sounds, the towers transport you to new places and cultures and introduce you to different poverty-related challenges, such as conflict in Afghanistan or climate change in Niger. Gather local perspectives on the issue through video interviews with community members, aid workers and government officials.

Explore the ways that poverty affects people in our own community at a special exhibit focused on the Pacific Northwest.

At the Take Action Stations, decide what you would like to do to fight poverty, whether locally or globally. Search the database for an activity that speaks to you: volunteering with a local food bank, mentoring an aspiring entrepreneur in the developing world, signing a fair-trade petition or hundreds of others.

A Hub for Local Action

The Action Center will be an exceptional educational asset to Portland. Like the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), the Action Center is an interactive learning environment. However, whereas OMSI inspires an interest in science, the Mercy Corps Action Center inspires a passion for making the world a better place.

We expect 70,000 visitors to the center annually; middle and high school students will make up our primary audience. Working closely with local school districts, the Action Center education team will lead class visits and provide teachers with curricula that prepare students for what they’ll learn at the center. If students want to stay involved after their visit, or if they cannot go to the center in person, they can explore the virtual Action Center at actioncenter.org. Online, students can access other Mercy Corps youth engagement programs, such as the Global Citizen Corps, a national network of youth who educate and mobilize their schools and communities to fight global poverty.

The Action Center will also partner with a variety of regional nonprofits to include their volunteer and advocacy opportunities in our Take Action Stations, which will encourage volunteerism in the local community.

Our supporters have long asked us how they can become more involved in our work. Until now, we did not have a way to include them. When the Action Center opens, we will begin to see the tremendous benefits of empowering Portlanders of all ages in their desire to make the world a better place. Change starts here.

To learn more about the Mercy Corps Action Center, contact Director Julie Mancini at jmancini@mercycorps.org or 800.292.3355.