Events are free and held on the third Friday of each month except December. In-person events are located at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 700 Callahan Drive in Bremerton. Sign-in begins at 6:00, with introductions at 6:30. Zoom link now has its own page on our website with multiple options for signing in. Zoom doors open at 6:30. July event is in-person only.
July 17, 2026 – Dr. Jessica Salvador, Belonging by Design: Building a Community Where Everyone Can Thrive. Join Dr. Jessica E. Salvador, Executive Director of the Kitsap Immigrant Assistance Center (KIAC), for a conversation about what it means to build belonging by design. Drawing from her lived experience as the child of immigrants and her work, Dr. Salvador will explore how communities can move beyond simply welcoming newcomers to intentionally creating systems, relationships, and opportunities that allow everyone to thrive. Through stories, insights, and examples from KIAC’s work, this presentation will examine how belonging strengthens communities, why it matters for all residents, and what we can do together to build a more connected and resilient Kitsaps. (More information at “Upcoming Speakers.”)
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July 17, 2026 – Dr. Jessica Salvador, Belonging by Design: Building a Community Where Everyone Can Thrive. Join Dr. Jessica E. Salvador, Executive Director of the Kitsap Immigrant Assistance Center (KIAC), for a conversation about what it means to build belonging by design. Drawing from her lived experience as the child of immigrants and her work, Dr. Salvador will explore how communities can move beyond simply welcoming newcomers to intentionally creating systems, relationships, and opportunities that allow everyone to thrive. Through stories, insights, and examples from KIAC’s work, this presentation will examine how belonging strengthens communities, why it matters for all residents, and what we can do together to build a more connected and resilient Kitsaps. (More information at “Upcoming Speakers.”)
August 21, 2026 – Sarah van Gelder, YES! Magazine founding editor, What Does It Mean to Be a Good Neighbor in Kitsap County? Ms. Gelder will look at current questions affecting us here in Kitsap County, like what it means to show up for our tribal neighbors, and immigrant coworkers, friends, and business owners? To build respectful relationships with the Native peoples who have called this place home for thousands of years? To honestly reckon with the divides that have long disadvantaged Kitsap’s African American community? She’ll draw on her work as a local organizer and as a researcher and writer to explore what it means to be a good neighbor — honest about the past, and focused on what’s possible now. She’ll offer a way forward rooted in mutual respect, a shared understanding of history, and the kind of community that makes all of us more resilient. (More information at “Upcoming Speakers.”)
September 18, 2026 – Carol J. Williams, “Dispatches from Moscow: Spies and Lies.” Carol is a retired foreign correspondent who covered the historic upheaval that ended the Cold War in an award-winning, 35-year career with Associated Press and Los Angeles Times. She chronicled the USSR’s brief era of hope for reform and the tragic consequences of its failure. She followed Eastern Europe’s euphoric rebellions that toppled Communist tyrants from Berlin to Bucharest. In Yugoslavia, she documented the rise of ethnic and religious nationalism fanned by corrupt leaders who pushed their people into devastating wars. Her dispatches from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine traced those conflicts to unresolved disputes from their days of imperial oppression. THE IRON CURTAIN CHRONICLES is a fictionalized trilogy recounting historical events of the last decade of the Cold War, told through the work of a young news agency correspondent. Join us as Carol discusses her book, Dispatches from Moscow: Spies and Lies, with Interviewer, Melody Sky Weaver, Librarian and Community Services Director, City of Port Townsend. Carol’s new book will be available for purchase.