White Bird Clinic’s Little Help Book: An Online, Expansive, and Accessible Resource Directory

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In a period of police reform and crises, one non-profit in the Eugene and Springfield area is focused on a holistic and easily-accessible means of addressing people in emergencies.  White Bird Clinic has departments in various places for medical, dental, crisis, substance abuse, and more as well as their CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets) program consisting of 3-4 vans on the street 24/7 working together with the local police in the area.  Since some people in crises had a problem interacting with police responders,  White Bird Clinic is popular for creating services helping take over emergencies where they can interact with those people in crisis better than the police, approaching them unarmed and helping to lessen the number of homelessness and mentally-ill people killed by police.  


A short term solution


The Little Help Book is a resource directory created by White Bird Clinic that provides information on human and social service resources around Eugene, OR, Springfield, OR, and nearby areas.  

Though they have continued to make physical editions where one can pick up the book at any of White Bird’s offices, it’s expensive to produce and update in its physical format. Thus, the Little Help Book was brought online PDF format. Download here.


Not only would the PDF digital format help save money but it would also be very accessible to people from their computers and phones.  With the Little Help Book being almost 100 pages, the Clinic focused on making it easy to navigate and valuable source of information, by doing the following:

  • Listing which services that are ADA accessible
  • Listing which speaks languages outside of English
  • Separating the resources by category (includes Housing, Legal, Food, ‘Unique Situations’ which include LGBTQ and Veterans individuals, and even job search assistance)
  • Shares the addresses, Hours and Days of operations, phone numbers, and small but detailed descriptions of every service listed


Help build an accessible resource directory for every crisis possible by volunteering from home

Currently, White Bird Clinic is seeking to make the digital version Little Health Book in an even more accessible format online. They are also working on developing mobile versions of its services to help more people which you can view here.


Help White Bird Clinic evolve and grow

During COVID-19 when people face several health concerns (especially those that are homelessness and have mental health problems) and not be able to pick up a physical copy of the Little Help Book, developing online versions for desktop, tablet, and mobile and making it as accessible as possible to the public, will a be a tremendous step in helping save lives at risk, during COVID-19 and beyond.


White Bird Clinic is seeking tech experts in Front-End, Back-end, and additional features for Mobile.  They are also looking for people with expertise in cultural issues, graphic designers to create icons for mobile, as well as DevOps and technical leads.

To apply to their positions and get in touch with them, click here.

Also, join Democracy Lab at the Summer Create-a-thon on July 18th where you can do some work for Little Help Book and other amazing projects.