hi this is are my grego from seeing your perspective today we will be talking to two guests from green thumb green thumb is an organization over thirty years has served the employment and training needs of millions of low income out of work older americans operates the senior community service employment program and helps elad real men and women who are fifty five or older develop current and marketable skills and build self confidence and ultimately find a job this public partnership works because it's a hand up not a hands thank you thank you let's talk a little bit about green thumb mary lee can you tell us what green communist green zone is an employment training program for people who are fifty five or older who meet the income guidelines that are a resident of pennsylvania  what they do is we provide training so that somebody can go into the private sector and find a job they may have all skills which need updated and this is our job to help people find a job away from green thumb and who participates in the program and how to funded were funded by the department of labor it started back in the time of lyndon johnson with the beatification of america and we're thirty years old as you had said in your opening which is a wonderful opening what happened was it was to subsidize the farmers and it started out with two hundred and forty farmers as to subsidize their income by beautifying the american highways and byways and it started with the war on poverty to help people have that little bit of extra income that they could help feed their families we have grown to over eighteen thousand people across the united states and puerto rico rico also to rico also and what they do is they are assigned to a nonprofit which will talk about today for twenty hours a week at minimum wage to upgrade their skills and to help support their income while they're looking for work in this wonderful city yes it is a bit of a nor how did you learn about this program i started as a volunteer at the hidden treasures store in canton for which is part of the washington city mission and there were two green summers working there at the time and i learned about the program through them and through the other persons in the store and they asked me if i was interested in me i said yes so i had an interview by telephone in an interview in person and i started a training work assignment there and i love it good well merely we also said something else that i was under the impression that the program was only in pennsylvania but according to what you said before it is all over yet as we are yes we are our headquarters for pennsylvania's in chairmans in that town near harrisburg where we're also part of a region and then the national office is in arlington virginia oh what is the criteria to become involved to be a host i guess you call it the host agency could be the nonprofit who is going to provide that training is that's a question yes all right for the growth that is going to provide the training they have to have what is called a nonprofit five a one c three status and was there a municipality or government organization themselves for instance and what they do then is they contact me  and ask if they can become a host state and say and provide training what we do is send them an application and we send them a copy of the host agency agreement they they will provide training for a person to eventually become employed and make a safe work environment for the person and they also send me a job description and tell me what kind of training they plan on providing for a participant who might apply for a green thumb o well this question here i think you answered it before but maybe you could expand on a little bit more what do green what do green thumbs workers that to participate in the program earn right they are and the minimum wage and for the twenty hours a week for their assignment while they're there ok so that would be twenty hours thirty things in a pay period to win so every two weeks they have forty hours in they're paid the minimum wage they're paid with then i'm white and the reason for the said on the reason we only goes a twenty hours is our goal it's that everybody eventually leaves green thumb in a very short period of time we want people to go on and find work in the private sector that's why we push training at the host agencies which is the nonprofit and also if they need computer classes we send them to school for that if they need to see the l license we send them to school for that whatever they need to be competitive in today's job market we help them to achieve what is a c b l a c d l is that a driver's license for for driving some people do it for over the road regs some people do it for local like if they're working for community action agency or another place a medical facility that may need someone who has that status to drive their vans when they're hauling people it means that they have received special training and they're qualified to do th when you cover all fields that we cover everything moving and it's fun well it is i'm also a green from training and i enjoyed very much in it so i got very interested in this program so that's why i would like to  you know let people know really how important this is and there are things for people to do out there and even though they don't know about it i'm hoping that this program will through told them that this is out there for them and they have the opportunity to do the same thing that i finally did so ok that's enough about me and let norm how does this program benefit you well lee already told you in one way financially in another way if you also mentioned classes i've had a computer class which the program took care of very nice and a third the host agencies help you if you have any limitations in your training for instance if you can't lift very much or if you can't stand on your feet very long they take into consideration your limitations and try to work out something for you we're going over it again all right as far as the amount of training let's let's do it a little bit better for the amount of training we fail that it takes sometimes up to a year for a person to become trained in them what they're learning all very very transferable skills into the private sector after a year's time we prefer to transfer someone else on to another host agency if they have not found a job and the host agency covers all force of training whatever they would be training their regular employees to do in that job description we fully expect them to train the green thumb participants in those same job descriptions and to fully train them and t get them ready for the job market will you were saying about training that now say that you have been training for every year length of time and that the host agency wants to employ you is that possible oh it sure is we can if if they want to employ you even in another job description we can even write a contract for a green some will pay part of the training wages and help the host agency out even more there or otherwise being you're fully trained why would they want to go out and hire somebody else you know who they don't know how their they work they would have to retrain again when they have a person who is now fully qualified to bring on board as a regular staff member and it looks good for them it looks good for the participants it looks good for greentown when this happens we don't expect all host agencies to hire because of their funding but their part in this even though the program is a participant driven by the enrollee we do expect the host agencies to do their part and they do an outstanding job of training  k i know i work at the can forgive library and they include me as part of the staff absolutely you are part of the staff is what they tell me and in it so even though you know i'm not being paid by them that's right they say that you are part of the staff that's right so it makes you feel good when you feel like you belong someplace yes it's a blue nor how many hours are you in training at your host agency twenty hours a week that responsibility that's between the host stages the other participants responsibility i have nothing to do with that because it's just like you're going for a regular job it's between you and that employer your work schedule and it's the same nor i guess by i should ask you where you're located and whether your duties i mean we've been talking all about this in everything we don't even know where you're at excuse me i'm at the hidden treasures store in camden spurred it's part of the washington city mission it's one if there are several retail stores and money earned at the store goes to to take care of all of their many projects i was trained as a retail clerk i did everything from dusting shelves to learning how to price donated merchandise to waiting on customers and just all the many things that you need to know and now i have a different assignment which is a manager training assignment and i'm doing such things as doing the book work financial book work things like that but i just started that said there's a lot i still have to learn there's always a lot to learn and everything  lee does this is a tough one peters township know about this program not for a while we have only had a couple of nonprofits apply to green thumb to become host agencies and we do have a waiting list of people who want to be and want to start training people for green thumb so they need to contact the numbers which will be shown today so that they will know who to contact and what we require is when we do a pre application on those they see if we send them a little form and they fill it out for us is a job description of what jobs they are willing to train on so the more we can get the word out because we only have so many we called them slots per count in this government this is regulated by the government each state is given by the department of labor so many slots to  fill and what we do is we assigned then the people accordingly and we can only fill the slots they can go a little bit over and that's fine because we like to keep the money in us because sometimes people are off sick and we need to keep that money going because we've how can i put these by county or by statewide but both the counties do it to fulfill the state's the state's main goal presently in pennsylvania we have about nine hundred flights available job in the field assistance job to make sure that the slots are filled at all times and people when we recruit they go out and they actively recruit by putting up signs by word of mouth by doing a program like this by being on the radio doing ads in the newspaper to recruit people to come on board with green thumbs that we can help them get the training that they need to go out into the job market once again you know i was thing is that going time does not tie a lot of money up in the advertising you know we don't run thousand dollar as anything like that for people to know because our interest is to put the money into training wages for like each if you and to anybody else that applies to the program we would prefer to do our advertising by each if you telling someone else or anybody listening would tell somebody else what the needs are and say say did you hear about the green to their interest that their interest is working in green houses or something like this we do have people that eventually find a job with this but my job is to find out what all is needed for them to become employed in that field know and if they need to know chemicals if they need to know anything at all then it's our job to find it if they need to take a course and flower arranging whatever somebody needs will fulfill that if that's their goal because we want them to be very employ evill by the time they leave the king well i'm reading one of your flyers that we get there putting up signs around harrisburg and all that well why not around here so people would get to know about it but then you didn't answer that you doing the right everything came i mean a lot of that was donated to us the signs are absolutely beautiful and i like how they're worded because it's not even have to look really close to see where it says even green because what they are trying to do is if you think how many employers are driving the busy highways all the time and they're saying the thing hire the older worker really think about the older worker ok now  add that there are also be a toll free number that they'll be able to call them or anybody who who really can't afford the long distance call there is an eight hundred number they can plug into a wall phone ok so i guess now it's time for me have my closing on this  man and it was very wonderful having both of you on my bank room thank you very much i did learn a lot of things in that and i hope the people who are listening will really take into consideration which you have said thank you in them because i would like to see peter's time to get in there and do a little bit to know what i mean and so if you have heard green some works for the older citizen the employer and the community if you have any questions about this program to call rita and all the other numbers that are listed on the screen there's also a major hundred number and an office for and the local number so greens i'm incorporated is our nation's leader in the field of older worker training and employment as a national but nonprofit organization green sam's mission is to strengthen families communities and nations by providing older individuals with the opportunity to learn work