Making an Impact with Cultivate Initiatives
This story was written by Ellen Clarke, HereTogether’s volunteer storyteller.
Almost a million pounds of trash have been cleaned up this year in East Multnomah County, all thanks to one nonprofit: Cultivate Initiatives (CI). The Community Beautification Team provides garbage removal at encampments and public spaces while spreading the word about the opportunities available to houseless folks through CI.
In the past two years, CI on SE 122nd Avenue in Portland has become an impactful nonprofit with several services. They are now managing the Menlo Park Safe Rest Village, a tiny home village with staff onsite 24 hours a day. This includes peer support advocates who connect Villagers to addiction and mental health treatment resources. The two mobile CI shower trucks are set up at various locations in Northeast and Southeast Portland, providing weekly showers for anyone who shows up. Through partnerships with nursing schools, nursing students provide health screenings and immediate basic care, preventing the default option of costly emergency room visits. Through a partnership with Move-In Multnomah and other housing programs, CI has helped 76 individuals move from tents into housing over the past year.
One of the foundations for a lot of what happens at CI is the intern program. Through this program, people looking for work– the majority of whom are currently experiencing homelessness– attend an orientation on Mondays and work Tuesday through Thursday. Interns work for a total of five days and earn $600 with no tax form required. Although many people living in tents want to work, they may not have IDs or an address to put on a tax form, making it a barrier. They work with a team and build job skills to be out in the community. They have a completion interview with an opportunity to follow up with an application and resume so they can apply for full-time employment at Cultivate Initiatives. This gives them a chance to practice the skills of completing an application and writing a resume in a supportive environment.
Intern Coordinator Doll Crain sets up the orientation and work schedule. Her story lends credibility to her role at CI as she has lived experience and started as an intern a year ago. At orientation she tells folks CI changed her life and now she hopes to help to change their lives. It is a low barrier program and she is honest about work expectations and addiction. If substance use interferes with their ability to work safely, she gives people a chance to try again when they are ready. At the completion interview for interns, she provides them with a letter of recommendation. Many graduates have moved from this program into treatment, housing and full-time employment because of the support the intern program provided to get them to the next step.
Doll finds it rewarding to see people regain their confidence and get out there knowing they can do this. The interns are reassured that the skills they have are important. She says, “Being in survival mode, they forget all that because they are focused on staying warm and dry at night. They do have things to offer, but have lost confidence in themselves.”
Over the last year 28 interns have been hired for CI jobs and four were referred to outside employers at local businesses. Workers build connections with employees and CI can recommend them to places that could hire them.
Full-time work pays at least $20 hourly at CI. Interns often take this opportunity and move on to jobs on the Community Beautification Team, property stewardship and development at local businesses or operating the shower truck. Having cash and being part of a team brings people to CI for employment. These staff with lived experience can become role models to interns, leading the cleanup groups and other projects. About six people work each day. Between 18 and 30 interested folks show up or call daily to get on the schedule. Most hear about it word of mouth; there is no advertising.
With more funding, this program could include more jobs for people. Starting in December, Cultivate Initiatives is raising funds to provide meals for their workers. Much of the funding for Cultivate Initiatives is currently provided by the Supportive Housing Services measure.
Cultivate Initiatives was started in a side yard and parking lot with neighbors sharing ideas. Matthew recounts how the idea for CI began four years ago with a Mill Park neighborhood meeting where about 300 people showed up to voice concerns about a homeless shelter nearby. A conversation was started about working with and embracing unhoused neighbors, and soon the shelter was accepted. Housed and houseless folks came together at barbecues and parties, which eventually turned into doing outreach and community engagement to other neighbors experiencing houselessness. People who were unhoused wanted to work in community, so they started by doing paid work in the neighborhood, maintenance and handyman work project by project for local businesses, in addition to operating a mobile shower truck and severe weather shelters. They kept track of hours worked on notebook paper. Soon the internship program took off. As they continued to do all this in the community, CI eventually became a nonprofit organization.
CI provides a hot breakfast with coffee and lunch for workers each day. This fuels them for their day of work, and some walk or bus from quite a distance to get a hot meal and work. Prepared food is purchased from a contract with Our Street PDX, keeping these hardworking people going.
Matthew McCarl, community engagement and action director, says, “Confidence is the number one thing. There is so much untapped talent and potential. These are people who are going to help all of us in the community with the skills they can offer. We give them a pathway so that their skills can shine.”
