If you love nature, enjoy working with children and have access to personal transportation, consider becoming a volunteer naturalist by attending Metro’s Nature University. Nature University is a 12-week training course that starts people along the path of becoming naturalists and teachers.

Metro’s Transportation Policy Alternatives Committee, or TPAC, is seeking volunteers interested in transportation issues to serve on the panel starting January 2013. There are four community-member positions up for appointment.

Have you joined Opt In yet? More than 2,500 of your neighbors in the region have already signed up to participate in Metro's new online panel and help guide important decisions that affect your community. And civic involvement isn't the only incentive: If you Opt In by next Tuesday, March 15, you'll be eligible to win one of five $50 cash gift cards you can use anywhere!

Metro has a new tool to help build an Opt In online panel that represents the diversity of communities and viewpoints in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. On the Opt In website, you'll find a new "Who's Joined Opt In?" section showing live updates on the demographic makeup of the panel, including graphs for age, race, gender, education, political leanings and county of residence. The new tool will inform Metro's upcoming phase of targeted Opt In outreach to help the panel become more diverse and representative as it grows to its target size of at least 10,000 members.

Metro's new Opt In online panel has signed up more than 1,000 members, an encouraging participation milestone for the new research panel. Metro’s goal is to reach 10,000 Opt In panelists from the Portland-Vancouver area providing input into decisions affecting their communities. Join the panel by Feb. 15 to be entered in a drawing for five $100 Powell’s gift certificates.