Verde Landscape is fundraising
Support Our Crew-Direct Relief for Verde Landscape
Many communities have been impacted by COVID-19 and Verde is no exception. Verde’s Landscape Workforce Training Program hires and trains crew members from Cully and other low-income, people-of-color communities to offer higher-value, higher-skilled landscape services in Portland. It has operated like a small business, generating revenue for Verde through contracts and grants. The uncertainty of the future after COVID-19 has forced our partners and clients to suspend our larger contracts indefinitely. Verde cannot absorb the loss of income without putting the entire organization at risk.
Because we are unable to plan for the future, our only option is to close the program indefinitely and lay off most of the crew members. This has been a tremendously difficult decision for all of us at Verde and will be a huge loss to the entire organization.
Verde Landscape started in 2005, the year Verde was established as a nonprofit and is our longest-running program/social enterprise. The Landscape Workforce Training Program has taken crew members through classroom and on-the-job training to obtain new skills and knowledge necessary to compete for jobs in the green workforce, in hopes to earn a higher salary, receive benefits for their families, and improve their overall quality of life. Most of the landscape crew has been with us since the very beginning, as the heart of our organization. We are deeply saddened.
Verde Landscape crew members are people of color, immigrants, mixed status families who live paycheck to paycheck and cannot file for unemployment. During this transition, Verde will extend health insurance benefits and will continue to pay partial wages until the close of the program May 7 or May 21.
Verde is committed to supporting the landscape crew, but in order to do so we ask you for your support. Our goal is to raise $12,000 to provide all 10 Landscape employees with severance pay of $1,200 to help get them get by during this job transition and the current Coronavirus pandemic.
Read more about Verde Landscape here: https://verdelandscape.org/
Because we are unable to plan for the future, our only option is to close the program indefinitely and lay off most of the crew members. This has been a tremendously difficult decision for all of us at Verde and will be a huge loss to the entire organization.
Verde Landscape started in 2005, the year Verde was established as a nonprofit and is our longest-running program/social enterprise. The Landscape Workforce Training Program has taken crew members through classroom and on-the-job training to obtain new skills and knowledge necessary to compete for jobs in the green workforce, in hopes to earn a higher salary, receive benefits for their families, and improve their overall quality of life. Most of the landscape crew has been with us since the very beginning, as the heart of our organization. We are deeply saddened.
Verde Landscape crew members are people of color, immigrants, mixed status families who live paycheck to paycheck and cannot file for unemployment. During this transition, Verde will extend health insurance benefits and will continue to pay partial wages until the close of the program May 7 or May 21.
Verde is committed to supporting the landscape crew, but in order to do so we ask you for your support. Our goal is to raise $12,000 to provide all 10 Landscape employees with severance pay of $1,200 to help get them get by during this job transition and the current Coronavirus pandemic.
Read more about Verde Landscape here: https://verdelandscape.org/
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