|
When environmental groups spend money, they produce more than environmental benefits - they produce economic benefits. The question is: economic benefits for whom? Verde Outreach works with environmental groups to change their spending practices so they can support green jobs and job training for disadvantaged communities.
Consider Verde's partnership with Friends of Trees:
While developing its proposal for the City of Portland's Grey-to-Green Urban Canopy Project and Community Tree Planting Campaign RFP, Friends of Trees realized that it would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on landscape contracting services and on nursery stock if it was awarded the RFP. If they were purposeful, their money could make a real difference in the economic health of low-income families.
Friends of Trees and Verde worked together so that Verde Landscape could meet the Campaign's landscape contracting needs and so that Verde Nursery could provide trees to the Campaign, supporting many new jobs at these enterprises and leveraging new opportunities for each organization. Friends of Trees' experience can serve as a model for how other environmental groups can use their spending to support green jobs and job training. |
