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.
The Green Visions program has just wrapped up its 10th year of programming. This year our program was as successful as ever. Here are some quick statistics about this year…
80% of participants graduated from our program
100% of participants received OSHA 10 certification and Beginner Landscape Technician training through Cornell Cooperative Extension
As of October 7th, the completion of the program…
33% are employed full time
58% are pursuing further education
50% are still actively applying for jobs with the help and support of our program.
We are so proud of this year’s program graduates. Green Visions hopes our continued support will help our participants find empowerment in the workforce. Thank you again to everyone who supports this program, without you, we would not be able to achieve our goals.
On October 17th Green Visions celebrated the completion of our 10th year! We were joined by neighbors, former participants, funders, friends, and even Mayor Malik Evans.
The occasion also marked the groundbreaking of the remodel of 188 Whitney to create the Green Visions Training and Education Center. This remodel will allow Green Visions to expand in many ways. First, we will have a home base in the heart of JOSANA, dedicated to workforce development training and assistance to the community, along with environmental education.
Second, this new space will allow Green Visions to expand its programming into the winter months. This new program will allow us to double the youths we serve each year.
Our final cause to celebrate was the installation of a new sculpture on the 188 Green Visions Campus. The “Symbol”, created from metal by Gareth Fitzgerald Barry, is intended to be an onsite representation of the Green Visions Workforce Development Program. The sculpture is an iconic manifestation composed of 22 parts, unified as a single, undulating but unbroken line flowing through space, finally forming the Green Visions logo. The 22 sections of the sculpture represent each week of the program for every participant, while the unification of these sections to form ‘The Symbol’ represents the successful completion of the program and the many stops along every person’s individual journey with Green Visions.
Being an outdoor sculpture, ‘The Symbol’ stands 10 feet tall and will be subject to the elements. It will patina and age with distinction. Its shadow will further serve to showcase the Green Visions logo on the very land on which program participants work and grow, providing an interactive sundial.
‘The Symbol’ will stand out among the surrounding foliage without overshadowing adjacent program amenities, such as the Green Visions House and Outdoor Classroom. Positioned towards the corner of the lot, ‘The Symbol’ will become incorporated into the landscape and skyline of the program site.
More of Gareth Fitzgerald Barry’s work can be found on his Instagram @garethfitzgeraldbarry.
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.
This past week Greentopia hosted a cocktail party to thank our Green Visions program partner Lucas Green House. The event took place on our viewing platform with a beautiful view of the high falls gorge.
In attendance was the Lucas Green House staff and recently former-owner Susan Palomaki. The party was to celebrate Susan, a huge partner of the program, and her retirement after 15 years of owning and working the Lucas Green House. Lucas Green House has partnered with our Green Visions program for the past 5 years. They have helped us by providing a space to start our flowers and giving the program extra flowers as well, in order to make our gardens more beautiful. Our Green Visions Program is always looking for partners with local businesses such as Lucas Green House. If interested reach out to morgan@greentopia.org.
Our viewing platform cocktail parties are available to all! They include a tour of the high falls gorge from the Pont de Renne Bridge by the director of the Greentopia board Lisa Baron. With wine, cheese, and a beautiful view it is a great place to bring friends, coworkers, or anyone else! For more information reach out to Lisa Baron at lisa@greentopia.org.
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.
Our Green Visions program is adapting, like us all, to the COVID-19 pandemic. Planting has begun at both our Joseph Ave. and Smith St. gardens! A late but great start! A special thank you to the Nature Conservancy for their continued support of our Joeseph Ave. location and another huge thank you to Harris Seeds for their seed donation and Lucas Green Houses for the space to start these lovely plants. Check out our partners’ Facebook pages here!
Check out some great pics of the work our Green Visions Team has been doing so far!
planting on Smith Ave!
New Earthway Precision Garden Seeder (introduced to us by Harris Seeds!)
Working on Smith Ave! 10,000 sunflowers planted and counting!
Planting at the Joseph Avenue Community Blooms Garden! Done in partnership with the Nature Conservancy! We have planted dianthus, echinops, statice, cardinal basil and celosia flowers!
Again a special thank you to Harris Gardens Lucas Greenhouse and the Nature Conservancy for their amazing help!
Now in its sixth year, the Green Visions program has installed an 800 square foot shipping container at the Green Visions Campus at 174 Whitney Street in the JOSANA neighborhood. The container has been completely retrofitted by Ikoniq, a Canandaigua-based company that creates top-of-the-line carts, kiosks, and containers for many of the country’s largest stadiums, concert halls, and amusement parks. The Green Visions’ container was designed to be used as a complete floral design workspace – with flower cooling room and tool room – and received financial support from the Allyn’s Creek Garden Club, the Rochester Garden Club, The John C. Wegman Foundation, Kathleen Holt and Steve Lurie, and the August Family Foundation.
“The Green Visions shipping container is a huge step forward in helping to manage the program’s consistent flower bouquet production and delivery. It is a first for the City of Rochester and serves as a model of alternative programming space for other grassroots neighborhood programs.” Says Lisa Baron, Board Chair of Greentopia.
This project also serves as another example of the amazing collaboration found between Rochester organizations committed to the revitalization of the JOSANA neighborhood. This year, the Green Visions program is providing landscape maintenance for 19 Habitat for Humanity properties. In return, Habitat for Humanity and Rochester Youth Build provided the materials and installed a driveway for the shipping container. All of these neighborhood developments are guided by the vision and leadership of Charles Settlement House Neighborhood Association and its JOSANA Master Plan. For the last six years, the Green Visions program has been working not just in the neighborhood, but more importantly with the neighborhood.
It’s been an unusual summer for Green Visions, Greentopia’s job development program. A super-soaked spring and summer, along with some red-tape tangles, delayed the start of the season. Manager Morgan Barry said the Green Visions garden wasn’t tilled until late May, when it’s usually under cultivation by the first week in May. So some plants, notably a major crop of zinnias, are coming in a month late and all at once.
Rather than trying to conduct business as usual in an unusual situation, the program is experimenting a bit. Green Visions is still a job development program for young people 16-22 in the Northwest quadrant of Rochester, one of the poorest sections of a city where half the kids live in poverty. But with expertise growing in the staff and the job-skills participants, the site in the JOSANA Neighborhood can also offer more. A cut-your-own-bouquet event scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 19, for instance. Visitors can walk away with their own cut flowers, or can rely on the expertise of managers Morgan Barry and Tiani Jennings to make a beautiful arrangement.
Other developments:
Greentopia purchased additional land adjacent to the main garden lot (797 Smith St.)
A learn-to-drive program is being added to the program later in the growing season, adding another key skill young people need to to secure regular employment.
A grant from the Developmentally Disabled Giving Circle at Rochester Area Community Foundation is allowing students who’ve aged out of Edison Technical High School’s program for disabled students to continue working – and, more importantly, getting paid – in the Green Visions program. (Most of the 16 program participants are from the neighborhood, but a couple spots are set aside for developmentally disabled disabled youngsters, who have an even harder time gaining job skills and employment.)
“It’s bringing back graduates and keeping their momentum going,” Barry said.
One such graduate is Frank Graham, 22, who returned this summer to work with Green Visions for a second year. He listed planting, watering, fertilizing, working hard and getting along with people as some of the things he’s learned.
“I’m a workaholic. It’s good, though,” Graham said. At home, his mother doesn’t like him to leave the house. Working with Greentopia gets him out into the sunlight. “It’s better than being in my room, cooped up,” he said.
Ideally, Green Visions graduates will take what they’ve learned over 20 weeks in the growing season and apply it to year-round jobs. Angela Tye, 22, has her sights set on a job in a garden department at a place like Home Depot or Wal-Mart. “I know what to do now. I know what the flowers need, what the plants need,” she said.
There’s the young mother who didn’t know what it was like to hang out with other teenagers because she had a baby at 13 and dropped out of school. And the young father of two who finds working with flowers at Green Visions an oasis of peace in his life. Gardening can be hot, dirty, hard work. But it is also a lifeline of job skills and resume building for youth 18 to 22 living in a city neighborhood suffering from crushing poverty.
“These kids are in situations or circumstances in their lives because of the challenges they face,” said filmmaker Doug Buckley, of Blackbird Son Video Production, who created the “14 Stories” series. “That consumes them, I think.” A job with Green Visions exposes the young workers to life beyond a small radius within Rochester’s northeast side. Green Visions also helps the workers find new ways of dealing with life. “They’re used to conflict – and I know because they said it — that’s their first instinct is to react as if they’re in a conflict,” Buckley said. Side benefits of the program are that flower cultivation is making the soil healthier and the neighborhood more beautiful. Green Visions workers plant, raise and harvest the flowers, which are sold in stores such as Wegmans, Hart’s Local Grocers and the Rochester Public Market.
Seven of the “14 Stories” films are online now, and seven others are due to be uploaded later this spring. Watch and share, please. If you’re so moved, please support these young people or others like them by sponsoring a youth in the Green Visions program. There’s no other job development program like Green Visions in Rochester, providing 20 or more weeks of employment and training, including federal job safety certification. Watch “14 Stories” and you’ll see that it’s no small achievement for young people in the JOSANA neighborhood to complete the program while dealing with all the survival issues they face.
The stories take you into the hearts and, in one case, the home of the Green Visions workers. Buckley captured the sometimes bleak facts of their lives as well as their blossoming hopes. “I was really humbled by the fact that they would tell me those things, and tell me how they felt about those events in their lives,” he said.
For example, Tarin, who dropped out of high school in 10th grade, now hopes to go to college to study performing arts. “I can finally feel like I’m involved in something,” he says on camera.
Then there’s Anthony, who goes by the nickname of “Magic.” He shares, “Green Visions keeps me out of a lot of stuff. When I come to work, I get a lot of negative things off my mind.”
And there’s Breanna, who was living in a homeless shelter when she first started with the program. “I didn’t really feel like I had a family until I came to Green Visions,” she says. Now she talks about wanting to own a house and her own business.
