Opportunity still blooms in a wet summer

Opportunity still blooms in a wet summer

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.

Green Visions has a corner on hope in the JOSANA neighborhood

At the end of a rainy-turned-sunny day, two young women are packing up at the Green Visions gardens on Rochester’s northwest side before planning to walk to their nearby homes. Tiani Jennings, 20, has already won another job with her Green Visions credentials. Tamyha Jones, 18, is hoping the certifications she has earned by working with Green Visions will help her secure a better-paying job the next time she looks for painting work.

Jennings is in her third year of working with the April-to-October job training program and she’s now an assistant site manager. Jones (pictured above) used to volunteer at the Smith Street site when her older sister worked for Green Visions. This year is her first year as an actual employee at the garden, where she plants, weeds and waters flowers, and makes bouquets.

Morgan Barry, the site manager who oversees the program for Greentopia, said Green Visions currently has 13 employees who each work up to 20 hours a week. Many of them also juggle a second job, school, or classes to earn their General Education Diploma. Besides working the gardens in the JOSANA Neighborhood, the Green Visions employees sell bouquets from the site and at the Rochester City Public Market on Saturdays. Flowers are also for sale through the Greentopia web site. The flowers serve multiple purposes as they:
• Provide income in a neighborhood with few jobs
• Provide 22 weeks (at least twice as long as summer programs) of job training during the growing season
• Make the soil healthier
• Beautify the neighborhood
• Create community engagement.

Jennings said she is planning to move into the home health care field, but she’s earned marketable skills and support by working with Green Visions. “This job has helped me from the very, very first day,” she said. “I’m 20, I’m very young, but I have management experience, I have a great resume. And, Morgan is always in my corner. I know I can count on him if I need him.”

And Greentopia is in this neighborhood’s corner, too.