by Diana Louise Carter | Friday, August 18, 2017 | Green Visions, Greentopia, Morgan Barry
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.
by Diana Louise Carter | Saturday, June 11, 2016 | Green Visions, Greentopia
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.
We must be doing something right!
by Diana Louise Carter | Friday, April 15, 2016 | Green Visions, Greentopia
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.”
by Diana Louise Carter | Tuesday, February 2, 2016 | Green Visions, Greentopia
February is Green Visions month! Just as people in are turning to seed catalogs to dream about what they’ll grow in the spring and summer, Greentopia is planting new “seeds” to ensure that Green Visions continues to thrive. And, by the way, they’re also ordering seeds.
Until now, this workforce development and neighborhood beautification program has been supported primarily by grants and gifts. But grants tend to be short-lived and often unrenewable. That’s true whether the program has measurable success, as Green Visions does or not. So Greentopia is taking the month of February to work on making make Green Visions more sustainable financially. What does that mean?
First, imagine changing someone’s life for $3,500. That’s what it costs to provide professional landscaping, construction, and safety training for one Green Visions worker, as well as a stipend for 20 hours of work per week for 20 weeks. The young people who complete the Green Visions program come from one of the poorest sections of Rochester, where jobs and job training that can lead to greater things are often pretty scarce. “It’s not just that these kids will be ready to do landscaping. They’ll be ready to work,” said Michael A. Philipson, co-founder of Greentopia.
Sponsorships will include perks, such as a community-service or team-building opportunities on site for the sponsoring company or group, and display of the company’s logo on signage at the Green Visions sites and in publicity materials and online.
“Ideally, we’re hoping that businesses large and small will look at it as an opportunity for sponsorship,” said Morgan Barry, manager of Green Visions. Businesses or individuals who can’t afford the full price to sponsor one trainee would be welcome to sponsor at more modest levels, Philipson said.
Meanwhile, Green Visions is also moving to a more commercial model to become more self-sustaining. Here are some of the steps being taken:
- Acting on the Green Visions business plan.
- Expanding the value and varieties (50 instead of a dozen) of flowers grown on site.
- Talking with current retailers of Green Visions bouquets about expanding sales to other stores.
- Connecting with florists who will buy in bulk at wholesale prices.
- Modernizing methods, such as irrigation and fertilization, to free up workers to handle more profitable duties.
All in all, it’s a great month to be green.
by Diana Louise Carter | Wednesday, July 22, 2015 | Green Visions, Greentopia
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.
