About 30 enthusiastic vendors introduced several hundred San Quentin inmates due for release soon to job opportunities in the burgeoning, environmentally oriented “green industry.”
The first-ever Green Career Fair was held Aug. 28 in H-Unit. It was presented by The California Reentry Program and the Insight Garden Program. The fair featured entrepreneurs and educators from a myriad of fields.
Greeting and directing interested inmates were Allyson West, who runs the California Reentry Program in H-Unit, and Beth Waitkus, who has taught the Insight Garden Program at H-Unit for eight years.
Attendees from the community set up displays and offered information at two dozen tables, as photographers and media representatives circulated the room ,snapping pictures and holding interviews with some of the inmate-clients.
“Our goal is to introduce people to green industries and what the training opportunities are,” West said. “We want to familiarize people with the industry and tell them how to get into it.”
Many facets of the green industry were represented. Leigh Anne Starling of The Homeless Garden Project passed out flyers highlighting a three-year comprehensive job training program that teaches gardening and farming skills. Another vendor, City Slicker Farms, based in West Oakland, takes a several-pronged approach. One focuses on helping urban dwellers convert their backyards into agricultural spaces by testing the soil, creating a gardening plan, supplying items such as compost, growing boxes and seeds to families wishing to turn their backyard into food-producing gardens.
The Community Market Farms Program takes “vacant or underutilized land and transforms it into market farms.” The food they grow on these urban farms is sold to people in the community at affordable prices.
Another vendor, Traingreen SF, offers vocational education and training in recycling, transportation, energy efficiency and solar. The San Francisco Clean City Coalition was on hand to offer a Green Jobs Program that provides transitional employment, environmental literacy, job readiness and placement assistance.
