Greentopia has been working in partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension to run our Introduction to Landscape Technicians Certification program. This certification program has been so important to helping our participants gain a better understanding of horticulture, environmental issues, and landscaping basics. This gives our participants skills, knowledge and a certification to help them find empowerment in the workplace and to gain meaningful employment in green industries. We are so thankful to Cornell Cooperative Extension for their continued work with our program.
Cornell Cooperative Extension also has other amazing educational programs that you can partner with. To learn more about Cornell Cooperative Extension and their work click the button below!
Flower City Habitat for Humanity is partnering with Green Visions to create our new workforce development center at our 188 Whitney Street Campus. This new project is a part of Flower City Habitat for Humanity’s ongoing work in the JOSANA community. We have partnered with them previously to build our outdoor classroom, which made it possible for us to continue to run our program and serve JOSANA during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are so excited to see the new possibilities with the creation of our training center, and thankful to Flower City Habitat for Humanity for their work with us and with the JOSANA community as a whole.
Flower City Habitat for humanity is now running its Critical Home Repair Program, dedicated to helping members of downtown Rochester have their home needs met and restored. They are also accepting applications for new houses for 2023. If you are interested click here for more information.
Our partners at the Rochester Female Charitable society have just celebrated their 200 year anniversary of serving the Rochester community.
On February 26th 1822, 60 women came together to create the Rochester Female Charitable society. This society helped to found the first schools, public projects and social services in the community. This was the beginning of women’s civic activism in Rochester, at a time when the city was only a settlement of around 2,700 people.
We are proud to be one of the many organizations that the Rochester Female Charitable society supports in the Rochester Community. This organization has been dedicated to supporting women and the Rochester community as a whole, helping to further futures. Thank you so much for your continued support as we try to build a better Rochester together.
Green Visions Social Distance Graduation at our Smith Street Gardens
Green Visions successfully completed its 8th year of delivering quality job training and hand-on, work experience to at risk-youth in our city. A late start, drought-like conditions, and a health crisis working against us, couldn’t stop us from pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and getting to work. We navigated the complicated year that was 2020, once again transforming over two acres of once vacant, city land into bountiful, flourishing gardens in the JOSANA and Joseph Avenue neighborhoods.
We also were able to add Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Introduction to Landscape Technicians training to this year’s roster of classes and Bank of America Financial Literacy class.
Cornell Cooperative Collective working with program participants.
Of our 7 graduates, two have been re-enrolled, full time, back into RCSD high schools; one has enrolled in and currently attends SUNY Brockport, full-time as a journalism major; and 4 have secured full-time or part-time employment. Additionally, we were able to hire back 3 Green Visions graduates as site managers to help mentor, teach, and lead our team. Congratulations to our 2020 cohort! And thank you to all of the partners who helped make our program happen this year!
Lastly, with this year’s team successfully completing our program, Green Visions crossed the landmark threshold of having graduated over 100 City of Rochester youth from our transformative program. We could not be prouder of each and every single member of our Green Visions family as we continue to support them and bear witness to their inspiring growth.
On September 4th Congressman Joe Morelle came to visit our High Falls viewing dock and take a tour of Hydro Station 4, the first hydroelectric station in Rochester now owned by Greentopia! Congressman Morrell received the full tour of our facilities from Greentopia’s Executive Board Chair Lisa Baron. Erik Frisch from the City updated Congressman Morelle on the ROC the Riverway project in HIgh Falls and Ben Gustafson from Hunt Engineering shared the latest findings of the structural study being done on Hydro Station 4.
The Roc the Riverway initiative seeks to capitalize on the riverfront property and adjacent natural space of the city of Rochester, places such as the High Falls and the beautiful gorge. By investing in these places such as the High Falls and the beautiful gorge, Rochester will be able to generate space for economic development, family recreation, environmental protection, and education about the natural assets of the city of Rochester. These green spaces are a part of Rochester that so far has been an untapped resource.
We were so happy to share the High Falls and our vision with Representative Morelli, Thank you for the visit Congressman!
Thanks to you all our Dinner Off the Bridge event was a HUGE success!
146 delicious dinners prepared by The Cub Room’s amazing staff were sold.
A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support our event! All of the proceeds were given to the Green Visions program, employing local youth to maintain our community flower gardens!
A special thanks to The Cub Room for hosting as well, along with Laughing Gull Chocolates, Java’s Cafe, Century Wine & Liquors, and Black Button Distilling for their additions to our meals.
BetheGoodRoc envisions a future where frontline and healthcare workers at any time of a crisis are provided with simple comforts to help make the situation more bearable and maintain a level of normalcy for workers and their families. We do this through the community.
What Can You Do?
As a community, we can pool our resources to support this cause. You can’t deliver a home-cooked meal to a hospital worker, but BetheGoodRoc can!
Greentopia and Be the Good Roc have teamed together to raise donations that will be used to buy meals from local restaurants that go directly to our hospital support staff.
BetheGoodRoc has already coordinated 400 meals from Chicken Out and delivered them to RGH Cardiac ECU.
There’s certainly more to come from this great organization, and Greentopia looks forward to working with them on this needed project.
