We are very excited to have Danielle Kottmeier join the SEP team as our new Employment Support Coordinator. She is taking over for Ada Mo-Williams who has had her baby and is happily on maternity leave. Congratulations Danielle!

Danielle brings over five years experience supporting persons with disabilities and is passionate about coaching and mentoring individuals to achieve their goals. For the past two years, Danielle worked at IAM CARES Society as an Employment Counsellor and Case Manager for individuals that have had challenges finding and keeping employment.

Danielle is a tireless and enthusiastic supporter and takes great care to match people with the employment to which they are best suited. Danielle is thrilled to join the BOB team and is excited at the opportunity to work within the Inner City Community – an area she enjoys due to its diversity, culture and sense of place.

In her spare time, Danielle enjoys being active. She likes taking exceptionally long walks or hopping on her bike to get around the city – she intends to commute by bike to work at BOB, even in the rain!  Danielle adores animals of all kinds, but she is especially fond of her two cats: Leroy and Juniper.

Welcome Danielle!

It is with mixed feelings that we say farewell to Ada Mo-Williams. Ada has been an Employment Support Coordinator with BOB for over two years. In this position she has played a key role in delivering the Supported Employment Program. Ada is passionate about her career, and has used her skills to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Her counseling has helped many clients through difficult times to help them find success both on the job and in life. Today is Ada’s last day at BOB before going on maternity leave. For the past 9 months we have enjoyed watching her belly grow and being included in her journey towards motherhood, and now it is time for us to fondly say goodbye!

Ada & the whole BOB family

Ada has supported clients employed in positions at Recycling Alternative, Take the Green Challenge, Frogbox, Impark and more. She is always ready to meet people at their level and support them according to how they would like to be treated. For Ada this has included workplace visits, conversations with employers and managers, going out for coffee, follow-up phone calls, personal invitations to the SHINE supper, referrals to health care services, help seeking housing, job-specific skills training and more. Ada truly cares about the clients she works with, and has developed lasting supportive relationships with many of them. Her philosophy of committed, well-rounded support addressing a variety of issues in people’s lives illustrates what we consider to be best practices in the delivery of supported employment services.

Ada with Harris (left) and Justin (right), both longtime clients who have benefited from Ada's care and support

Ada, we have watched you go above and beyond to support your clients and we congratulate you on all the great work you have done here at BOB. We wish you all the best in your new life as a mom and can’t wait to go for dim sum together after the baby comes!

Toby Barrazzuol says he’s not a garden expert, but he and the team at Eclipse Awards and It’s Saul Good Gift Co have created a beautiful rooftop space for everyone in their office and manufacturing facility to enjoy. They grow food like strawberries, tomatoes, figs and a variety of herbs; flowers like irises, mallow, wisteria, clematis and lilies; edible weeds like chickweed and sorrel; and drought-tolerant species like sedums. That’s a lot of biodiversity for what was recently an asphalt roof!

What’s more, they DIY’d the heck out of it! Most of the garden is made from reclaimed materials scavenged from the community or found on Craigslist. Pathways are pallets and recycled decking, planter boxes are washtubs, and pots are secondhand.

When Eclipse and It’s Saul Good moved in to their current building it required a few renovations to meet their needs. They used the renovation process as an opportunity to incorporate plants and gardening into their office culture. In anticipation of the rooftop garden they added several large crossbeams (made from a sustainable pressed wood product) to ensure that the roof could support the weight of 25 people plus the garden soil. They also added two large skylights that bring enough natural light in to sustain many office plants, including this beautiful mass planting of African Violets. Looking up through the skylights you get a sneak peek at the rooftop garden.

The garden has been a couple of years in the making, and Toby says managing the garden continues to be a learning process. Crows and seagulls show up regularly to snack on young plants and eat tasty berries, and they have free reign since there are long periods where no one is on the roof to scare them off. They have an irrigation system, but some of the plants have nonetheless whithered a bit in the scorching sun of the last few weeks. Also, there’s no formal process for employees to manage the garden, so it’s a bit harder to plan regular tasks like weeding and garden clean up. A recent success is the worm composter they’ve added to their office, which is rapidly turning food scraps into rich soil for use in the garden.

Interestingly, Toby reports that there has been some debate among their office over the purpose of the garden. Should it be wild and green, letting whatever wants to grow take root? Or should it be a place to cultivate food in a more purposeful way? For the time being they have come up with a great compromise, planting a central bed with 100 strawberry plants and letting a few edible weeds spring up in between.

This garden is a great case study for anyone interested in starting a green roof project and making their home or business that much more sustainable. We hope you can learn from Toby’s experience and develop one in your workplace. Congrats to the whole team at Eclipse and It’s Saul Good for working together to make this great project happen!

And for you design nerds out there, enjoy a few more of Lani’s beautiful pictures…

Photography by Lani Johnson

While reading this blog posting, may we suggest that you play the following music. http://tinysong.com/fV1b

Now that we’ve set the atmosphere..

The Challenge

At BOB, we want to challenge ourselves to act more sustainable and authentically green.  So..  In order to challenge ourselves we would like to have a challenger!  We are hoping that YOU or your workplace will be up for this challenge and we’ll see how it goes!

The Point!

We want to be more green and recycle..  But it can be quite intimidating.  So we have one challenge a month, so that it is manageable and you can learn the ways of the green.

The Challenge!

• 4 people from BOB, would like to challenge a team of 4.  Or if you have a bigger or smaller group, we’ll just adjust how we score. 
• You need a team name.  And it better be good.

• Each month there will be one ‘green/recycling task’ that each person in the challenge will have to complete.

• The team who has the highest percentage of participation that complete challenges each wins!!

What do they win, you ask?  Fantastic question!  The winning team receives the ‘cup of awesome’ for one month!!!  (I’ve attached a picture of said cup of awesome)  And we can all get together for a ‘green lunch’ (also known as a salad potluck) to celebrate all of our awesomeness.

The Cup of Awesome

6 Month Green Challenge!

(one task per month)

1. Home & Office Recycling – Recycle paper and plastics.  The PROPER plastics.  Know the numbers and throw them in.
2. Beyond the Blue Box – A month of recycling all household and work plastics that aren’t city recycled.  And find a venue close to your house to take them!  (Brittania is close for me..)
3. Paint! – Find old paint, or someone else’s old paint that is going to waste and take it to the closest paint recycler.
4. Batteries – You know the drill..
5. Electronics – Same drill..
6. Compost.  This one will require some creativity by us.  But we can do it!!

For all of the green yogis out there..  Yes, this may be beginner.  But some of us are.  Join anyway!  Show us how it’s done.

Let me know if you are in..   And let the best greeny’s win!!  (even though, really, we all win in the end)

To accept this challenge (or for more info) contact Emily and Lani at jobpostings@bobics.org

What difference can a pair of boots make?

For this man, a pair of boots for roofing has meant a roof over his head.  After living for 3 months at a local shelter, *David found his own bachelor suite and job at a roofing company.  Unfortunately, after years of trying to get back on his feet, David doesn’t have the money required to get proper boots.  And getting a new place means more expenses and a tight budget.

David is determined not to lose his place and not to end up back on the street or a shelter.  So he has been  wearing his old boots…  Without steel toes, and falling apart.   After a referral to BOB’s Supported Employment Program we were able to get his feet into a solid pair of steel toes.

Congratulations David, on all your hard work!

*Not his real name.