Enrichment Center

Melissa Frye, Supervisor

Melissa is originally from East Aurora, a suburb of Buffalo, New York. She earned her B.S in Speech Pathology and Audiology at the State University of New York. She also studied jewelry, sculpture and metal arts. Melissa has lived in many places and settled in Portland in 1998. She enjoys travel and before coming to Port City she spent several months abroad, cooking and working with families on their organic farms. At home Melissa spends her free time running and biking, reading, gardening, metal working and sewing.

Dureti Jarra

djarra@portcitydevelopment.org
Dureti was born in the eastern part of Ethiopia. She worked as an elementary school teacher for 18 years. Dureti met and began doing household jobs for an American woman who was visiting Ethiopia. In 1995 she invited Dureti to visit Portland and Dureti decided to move here at that time. She had never been to the US before; her family followed 2 years later. Before starting at Port City in 2008 Dureti worked as a CNA for a few years. She also does Oromo and Amheric language interpreting in hospitals and clinics in her free time. Dureti says her greatest joys in life come from learning new things and helping people. She says there are always opportunities to learn new things and help people wherever she goes. She loves working at Port City and she feels that it is a very peaceful and happy place.

Esther Hockett

ehockett@portcitydevelopment.org
Esther Rose Hockett was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. Esther grew up helping her parents in the summertime selling balloons, toys, and souvenirs on carnivals around the Northwest. She majored in Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Esther fell in love with Port City after she performed with the Sprockettes (an all female mini-bike dance troupe) in January 2010. She has been loving working in the enrichment center since April 2010. Her favorite things to do in the EC are sew, dance, make videos, sit on the patio, and most of all spend her days with inspiring and awesome people. Esther also enjoys sewing, crafting, dancing, riding and fixing bikes, and summertime.

Ace Edwards

aedwards@portcitydevelopment.org
At heart, Ace is a storyteller and filmmaker.  After growing up in Georgia, Ace went to college in Virginia where she got her BA and MA in Art History.  After that, she came to Portland to learn digital editing and then worked in the Bay Area as a video editor and camera operator.  Ace likes watching movies, reading, listening to stories, and just hanging out on the front porch.  Ace worked in a group home for almost 2 years before joining Port City in early 2011.

Nora Bonnell

nbonnell@portcitydevelopment.org
Nora Bonnell grew up in the country in Oklahoma.   She lived in two houses her parents had bought from the city and duct taped together.  When she was in fourth grade her mother got her a sewing machine for Christmas. She began working on clothing for her stuffed cat purrpurr and has been sewing ever since. Nora moved to Portland in 2010 with her brother and sister. Her parents have since moved here as well.  Her free time is spent playing with her daughter and spending time with her family.

Kate Hopkins

nhopkins@portcitydevelopment.org
Kate Rose was raised in the sunshine of the southern slice of the San Francisco Bay Area with front yard redwoods and backyard chickens. Always a painter, poet, and songwriter, her early portraits of turkeys resembled the outline of a hand and her first lyrical masterpiece expressed her enchantment with the flight patterns of red birds. Her artistic spark grew over time and developed not only into more mature visual work and crafted musical musings, but it also expanded to encompass her creative approach to fine tuning her intuitive people skills to serve her community. Her multifaceted passions fueled her studies and guided her to achieve a double B.A. in Art and in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She now enjoys the pleasure of getting to do what she loves every day with the wonderful folks at Port City, sewing smiley faces on the Portland clouds, singing songs of sunshine with her friends, and contributing to the support of the creative dreams of those she works with.

In her time away from the Enrichment Center, Kate can be found baking, painting, playing her mandolin, going for bike rides or napping. You can see a sampling of her artwork at katerose.carbonmade.com (soon to be roseroom.org).