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

Doris from SOLEfood

Sitting on the street, sipping my iced americano at Columbia and Pender, I saw a beautiful sight.  Gorgeous Dalias being delivered by bicycle!  Doris from our local urban farm called SOLEfood, is taking flowers to Olla Urban Flower Project by my favorite sustainable mode of transportation.

SOLEfood Urban Farm is located at Hawks and Hastings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  They produce local food and employ local residents, bringing fresh food to a colorful neighborhood.  You can buy their produce at the Main Street Station Farmers Market on Wednesdays at 3-7pm.

Olla Urban Flower Project is a socially responsible business selling beautiful flowers in Gastown at 235 Cambie Street.  She sources all her flowers locally,  intends to hire residents from the neighborhood and is working towards zero waste.  Megan Branson, who started the business, is graduate from the Embers Build a Business Program.

Dalias enroute to Olla

Colin Pierce is Army & Navy Vancouver’s Personnel Manager, one of 11 managers at the Vancouver location. Over the years we have developed a great relationship with Colin and many of the Army & Navy staff, and we would like to celebrate their great work by designating them our Socially Responsible Employer of the Week!

When we interact with Colin, the first thing that always shines through is how cheerful he is. His warm personality carries over into his management style, where his laid back but caring attitude lets him connect with his employees and give them a high degree of support. In Colin’s words “I’m there for them on and off the job, and they know that”.

To Colin, being a socially responsible employer means having an individual committment to all employees, where he will help them “in any way, shape, and form” that he can. Colin has gone above and beyond for his staff, even helping them secure housing and fill out rental agreements. Colin enjoys the everyday challenge of managing employees with a variety of barriers. He really tries to foster each employee’s professional development, saying “I try to promote independence in my staff”. In working to support his employees he always looks to the bigger picture, saying “How is working at Army and Navy helping them get what they want in life? How can we help them with their careers?”.

We are always happy when Army & Navy chooses to hire through BOB’s HR Services, because we know that once our clients finish their three months in our Supported Employment Program they will continue to receive positive support in the workplace.

Colin currently uses BOB’s HR services exclusively because of the good relationship and rapport we’ve developed with him over the years. He doesn’t deal with other companies in the recruiting and staffing industry because they don’t value that relationship and have not followed up with him. Colin says he knows he can count on BOB Job Developer Andrew Bryson to send quality candidates, and that we will always let him know whenever anything or anyone of interest to him comes across our desks. In the past we have worked with Colin to recruit and train candidates for the annual Legendary Shoe Sale, and have helped him find quality cashiers, warehouse, and customer service staff; he even hired through us as recently as last week!

Army & Navy is a long standing member of the Downtown Eastside community, having served this neighborhood since 1919. By choosing to hire locally and do business here they exemplify BOB’s purpose: to support economic development in Vancouver’s inner-city that is inclusive of existing residents and businesses. We celebrate Colin and all the staff at Army & Navy for being part of what makes this community great!

The City of Vancouver has approved a plan to reduce the speed limit on Hastings between Abbot and Jackson Streets on a trial basis. However, there continues to be some opposition to this plan, and some of us at BOB have had face to face conversations with folks who don’t support it. I find this opposition curious for the following reason: traffic calming and measures to reduce speed are commonplace in other community-oriented residential neighborhoods in Vancouver, so why wouldn’t it be acceptable to implement speed reduction measures in the Downtown Eastside?

In a recent discussion with my colleagues, we came up with a few ideas on the subject.

This neighborhood is used by many as a travel corridor to get downtown. These commuters’ objective is often to travel through the area as quickly as possible, in part because of the way the neighborhood has been stigmatized as neglected ghetto of crime and poverty. While some of that may be true, it doesn’t account for the fact that there is an underrepresented and diverse community of wonderful people here who call the DTES home and deserve to have it recognized and celebrated as such. Traveling through the neighborhood at 60+kph is certainly way too fast to get acquainted with the many unique community services, architectural features, libraries, urban farms, art galleries, eateries, and shops that exist here in the heart of the city.

Furthermore, many of the opponents of the speed reduction plan protest on the grounds that it is the pedestrian’s responsibility to see if it is safe before they cross. Sure, common sense dictates that this would be the best-case scenario. But life on any busy street is unpredictable. To those who hold this view I ask: Are you a driver? How would you feel if you struck and injured or killed a pedestrian, even if it was “their fault”? It doesn’t matter who the person is, where they live, or whether they made the mistake. No one wants to be involved in a pedestrian-vehicle accident. Therefore, slowing down to increase driver awareness and reaction time, thereby reducing pedestrian fatalities, benefits everyone.

And as many pedestrians know, crossing a busy street is not an easy task at the best of times for the most able-bodied person. There are a variety of challenges that can make it even harder. In BOB’s Supported Employment Program we work with folks who have a variety of barriers to help them get on the job; many of the barriers we see actually would make crossing the street a challenge too! Have you been low income for a prolonged period of time, with a degenerative eye condition for which you cannot afford glasses? You literally cannot see well enough to cross the street in safety. Are you experiencing psychosis due to a mental health condition or drug use? If so, the reality of cars speeding down the street or the relative safety of a crosswalk may not be as it seems to you. Are you elderly or physically disabled? You may need more time to cross the street than the crosswalk allocates. And the list goes on. Are any of these cases any less worth slowing down for than, say, a kid in a school zone chasing a ball into the street? I think not.

The DTES is home to a high population of individuals with a variety of challenges in part because there is a concentration of services here, as well as a much higher degree of access to affordable housing options than the rest of the city. Every neighborhood has its own characteristic demography, and municipal policy, programming and infrastructure is targeted to reflect those special community traits. Think about your own neighborhood or your child’s school zone and how traffic is managed there. Let’s applaud the City of Vancouver for taking action on this important issue while we slow down to stop and smell the roses (or gaze at the swiss chard at SOLEFood Urban Farm, or get to know some of the local characters who make this community great).

Other news on this topic:

Vancouver Sun

BC Cycling Coalition

DTES Pedestrian Safety Project

All photos in this post courtesy of BURST! Creative Group