Ryan Buchanan and Carling Leon, co-workers at a Portland digital agency called Thesis, came up with an incredibly simple yet powerful idea to take two  hours on a Friday to clean up litter in a few blocks of our city and then support local restaurants by going out to eat lunch afterwards. 

Carling has led Thesis’  “Litter League” clean up program for the last 7 months in partnership  with an incredible Portland non-profit, AdoptOneBlock. It’s grown into an impactful monthly event where Thesis  employees pick up trash in the city and get to know one another in the process.

Ryan was so inspired by these monthly outings in the city, he partnered with Carling and AdoptOneBlock to leverage relationships with 100+ Executives in Portland to do this at a larger scale - with the conviction that we are better together because there are far more of us who believe in Portland than the negative information constantly shared in both mainstream media and social media.

So, we started WE BELIEVE IN PORTLAND to take action and take back the pride that we’ve always had in our city and are just now starting to show it more overtly.