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.
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.
When Morgan Barry, manager of the Green Visions program, heard that Monroe County was looking for young people to recognize, he said it was a no-brainer to nominate Tiani Jennings.
The 21-year-old manages our job development/garden site in the JOSANA neighborhood. She grew up in that Northwest Rochester neighborhood but now lives in suburban Greece. This summer is Jennings’ fourth with Green Visions.
“She mentors 15 others. She helps them trains them, helps them find jobs. She’s the same age as many of these kids but you kind of forget about that,” Barry said. “She’s a leader in this community. People look up to her.”
County officials agreed with Barry that Jennings is outstanding. She won Monroe County’s “Young Citizen of the Year Award” earlier in June.
“I’m just incredibly proud of Tiani,” Barry said. “Any recognition I can get shone on her is a great thing.” Her pay for 35 hours a week at the Green Visions gardens doesn’t go far enough to compensate her for all she does to guide and inspire other youth, Barry said.
Jennings received the award from County Executive Cheryl DiNolfo at a special event. County legislators representing both JOSANA and Greece took part in the recognition.
“It was so lovely. I felt so special,” Jennings said. She also was gratified to see her hard work paying off in the form of recognition. “Just to get involved in the community where I grew up…how can I not get involved?”
Jennings has been following two career paths for several years now. From April to October, when the Green Visions program is operating, she works in landscaping. “I’m a nature body. I love working outside,” she said.
The rest of the year she works as a home health aide. She’s planning to attend college to get a license as a registered nurse, upgrading from homecare. Still, we can tell she’s pulled in two directions, as she says would also love to find full-time work in landscaping.
“I love Green Visions. It’s like a piece of my heart,” she said.
In our continuing efforts to make the Green Visions self-sustaining, the workforce preparation program is tackling more than growing flowers in the JOSANA neighborhood and selling them in bouquets. The High Falls Business Association has hired the group to plant and water more than 30 planters in the immediate area. And, Green Visions workers will also maintain the recently opened Flour Garden on Brown’s Race.
“It’s the first time the program in JOSANA ties in with the program here,” said Michael A. Philipson, Greentopia’s co-founder, as he sat in the office on Brown’s Race. Greentopia’s vision of a series of gardens and amenities surround High Falls includes providing jobs to keep these new features attractive for visitors near and far. The current contract has Green Visions trainees also taking care of Granite Mills Park (at the north end of the FlourGarden) and a pocket park on Main Street next to an Rochester Gas & Electric building.
“It’s a tangible collaboration between Greentopia and the High Falls” Business Improvement District,” said Rachel Walsh, director of Rochester’s first EcoDistrict.
Green Visions workers are also tackling rain gardens at the Rochester Public Market. Because many of the bouquets the group will grow this year are already earmarked to be sold at Wegmans, Green Visions is seeking related work landscaping. The program’s success is getting noticed. Managers Tiani Jennings and Morgan Barry accepted an award from the Rochester Chapter of the Sierra Club in April. And June 9 Jennings was presented with a youth community service award from Monroe County.
Green Visions is planting new seeds. Not just the kinds that produce great cut flowers, but the kinds that produce opportunities for a new group of youth – developmentally disabled students at Edison Career & Technology High School.
The program has partnered with Edison’s Buildings & Grounds Careers program on a pilot project in three ways:
Students recently planted 5,000 seeds in the Edison greenhouse that will be transplanted into Green Visions’ gardens in the JOSANA neighborhood later this spring.
Two students from the program have been selected to be among the 15 interns who participate in Green Vision’s job training by working 20 weeks, from May through October, in the cut flower gardens in northwest Rochester.
Another six to eight students in the program will come as a group to the Green Visions gardens once a week for 10 weeks, too. Their performance as volunteers will help identify future interns, who are paid a stipend for their work.
“One of the major hurdles for people with a disability is getting that first job,” said Lewis Stess, co-founder of Greentopia. So far, most graduates of the Green Visions programs have gone on to jobs, but not within the landscaping field, Stess said. But the students from Edison may be an even better fit for this kind of landscaping work. “They could become great gardeners, great landscapers, great bouquet-makers,” he said.
Meanwhile, Green Visions has just been recognized by the Rochester region chapter of the Sierra Club with its annual Environmental Leadership Award. Morgan Barry and Tiani Jennings, managers of Green Visions, accepted the award April 21.
This latest accolade and the new partnership with Edison come at a time when Green Visions is ramping up its ability to serve commercial accounts. Last year Green Visions provided 15 bouquets a week to Wegmans’ East Avenue store. This year the order has been upped to 100 bouquets shared among three Wegmans stores.
“We’re going to be the only local suppliers of cut flowers,” Stess said. “And we supply those flowers from vacant, unused lots.”
Youngsters 18 to 22 who come from the Northwest part of the city will still fill most of the internships Green Visions provides. In a neighborhood like JOSANA, paid internships can be a rare opportunity leading to sustained employment. Besides providing a job reference and experience, the Green Visions program also provides certification in job and environmental safety practices — important credentials for landing another job.
Such training may be even more valuable for Edison’s students. Morgan Barry, program director for Green Visions, noted that the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds with disabilities is 70 percent nationally, which is double the rate for their non-disabled peers.
Chris McCoy, the Buildings and Grounds Careers teacher at Edison said, “One of the greatest indicators of post-secondary employment for individuals with disabilities is whether or not a student works or volunteers during high school. Community partners such as Green Visions provide a real-life work setting as well as the types of job training skills that are the difference between employment and sitting at home.”
February 18, 2016, marked the fifth anniversary of Greentopia’s incorporation. So what does our five-year-old organization have to show for those years? Plenty!
Four years of free Greentopia festivals to raise awareness of sustainability and green assets in downtown Rochester, bringing more than 50,000 people (many for the first time) to High Falls.
Four years of Film Festivals to call attention to green issues and sustainability.
Three Futures Summit conferences, bringing in speakers from around the country to talk about urban sustainability and green redevelopment.
Purchase of a large section of the High Falls cataract to preserve it as part of the GardenAerial project.
Three years of Green Visions, a job training program that has provided 20 weeks each year of job training and employment for young people in the JOSANA neighborhood, while producing beautiful gardens to beautify the neighborhood and provide cut flowers to sell.
The beginning of New York’s first EcoDistrict, a district that will share ideas and green projects to work and live more sustainably in and around the north side of downtown Rochester.
Awards and recognition, including being named a “top priority” transformational project by the Sustainability Workgroup of the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council.
A massive Dinner on the Bridge, calling attention to and raising money for Greentopia’s initiatives, including the GardenAerial circling the canyon around High Falls.
The completed FlourGarden: a running water, native plants garden with sculptures and lighted fixtures on Brown’s Race, the very first capital development project of the GardenAerial.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council; Metabolic Studio; The Farash Foundation; The Community Foundation; Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation; and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (among others).
And the support of hundreds of individual and corporate donors for events, programs, and capital projects. Won’t you join with us?
Greentopia launched a new way to raise funds Nov. 12 with a wine-and-cheese party where people pledged by text. The concept was so successful that the attendees EXCEEDED the entire fundraising goal — $5,000 for the FlourGarden — in less than 20 minutes.
About 50 people attended the event at the Greentopia offices on Brown’s Race. After they saw a film about the GardenAerial project, they were asked to consider making a donation by texting “Flour” to a designated number. Those who did so saw their names scroll across a screen with their pledge amounts, which made others hasten to join in.
“The idea of technology is right to us. It’s more green and engaging,” said Greentopia Co-Founder Michael A. Philipson. And the timing is right. The organization trying to create vibrant public realms has provided four years of FREEGreentopia festivals and events and will continue to offer some free projects to the public. But now it’s time for Rochester to lend its support to this critical work, Philipson said. The FlourGarden, expected to be completed December 24, is the first step in the GardenAerial, a series of park amenities, interactive trails and structures around the High Falls. This first step will cost nearly $1 million and Greentopia is trying to close in on the final dollars for the project.
Philipson said the smartphone app was so simple to use and so successful that Greentopia will most likely use it again to raise money for other projects, such as Green Visions, a job training program reclaiming and beautifying lots in the JOSANA neighborhood, and for a future gala.
