Timbers defender Zarek Valentin was honored yesterday as New Avenues For Youth’s first-ever “Scooper Hero,” a gesture of thanks for his work on last year’s #RibbonZ campaign, which raised $8,000 for the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center, the nonprofit’s LGBT-centric initiative.
The event took place as part of Free Cone Day at the Pioneer Square Ben & Jerry’s, which New Avenues operates as a PartnerShop. According to Aiden Hirshfield, the development and communications associate at New Avenues, they’re the first nonprofit in the country to use Free Cone Day as a fundraiser, which they call Scoop-A-Thon; Bank of America sponsored this year’s iteration of the annual event, and the volunteer Scoop-A-Thon teams who scooped all that free ice cream also raised money in advance of the event.