Five employees from Ball Horticulture Company spoke to students in the horticulture club at West Chicago High School last fall as part of Green Career Week. This spring, the students will take a field trip to Ball for Green Career Week, slated for Feb. 27 to March 3.
Last fall, Ball Horticulture Company sent five employees to a Chicago high school to talk about careers in the horticulture industry as part of the inaugural Green Career Week, an initiative spearheaded by Seed Your Future. Since then, the company has nurtured its relationships with those students to continue teaching them about the industry.
“Green Career Week opened the door for us to create a long-term relationship with the students and this school right here in our community,” says Ball’s social media manager Alyson Upshaw, who was one of the five Ball employees to visit the school.
In just a few weeks, those students will visit Ball’s facility to get an even closer look at the company as part of the second Green Career Week slated for Feb. 27 to March 3.
“We’ll be hosting the students here at Ball for lunch, a tour, and some activities in our greenhouses,” Upshaw says. “We plan to invite the group back one more time this year once our gardens are planted for yet another peek into the numerous careers available in horticulture.”
Those connections are at the heart of the initiative, designed to cultivate relationships between students and horticulture and floriculture professionals. The idea was conceptualized and executed by Seed Your Future, the Society of American Florists’ partner organization charged with growing interest in green careers.
Green Career Week asks horticulture and floriculture professionals to get involved in at least one of three ways: Host a field trip to your business; visit a local school or organization to talk about your business; or use social media to highlight careers and people in your business.
Although many in the floral industry are extremely busy this time of year, the Valentine’s Day rush doesn’t have to prevent you from participating in Green Career Week, says Seed Your Future’s Executive Director Jazmin Albarran. The organization has everything you need to prepare, including letters to send to schools, scripts for social media videos, activities to do with students, and much more.
As a first step, Albarran encourages professionals to promote Green Career Week on social media, and build from there.
“You can just start with social media, and then plan in the fall for a field trip,” she says.
Showcasing employees at your business is a great way to show young people how rewarding floriculture and horticulture careers are and why employees love their jobs, Albarran says.
Jena V. Gizerskiy, sales manager at Rosaprima, has already planned her Green Career Week — in two countries.
“We are working on involving ourselves with local schools in both Miami and Ecuador, where our farm is located,” she says. “We hope to engage a lot of students and have some floral fun to drive our message.”
Gizerskiy participated in Green Career Week last fall by posting about her experiences at the Expoflores event in Ecuador on Rosaprima’s social media platforms.
She is excited about the opportunity to help students identify their strengths and skills, and learn ways they can apply those to the floral industry.
“I believe this young generation has a lot to offer; innovation and creativity is something they are born with,” says Gizerskiy. “And as a sales manager, these are the kind of folks you want on your team at the end of the day.”
Register your business for Green Career Week here.
To hear more about Green Career Week and the ways that Seed Your Future is growing interest in floriculture careers, listen to the recent Flower Clique podcast, “What is Seed Your Future? Interview with Executive Director Jazmin Albarran.”
Kenya McCullum is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.
