Workforce Development
Gaining skills and growing confidence for pathways to employment
Through our Workforce Development initiative, we are creating opportunities for our community members to reenter the workforce. This initiative includes Community Beautification, the Intern Program, Property Stewardship, and Health & Hygiene. Most people involved in this initiative have been unemployed and unhoused for an extended period. These are people who want to give back to their community - to give to the people who helped them and give to those they know are still hurting. We are thrilled to support them by offering short-term and long-term work opportunities and a wide variety of support. Through these opportunities, individuals acquire new skills and build confidence in their work.
Community Beautification
Compassionate cleanup. Meaningful work. Straonger communities.
Clean and Safe Neighborhoods
Community Outreach
Supportive Employment
Peer led training
Our hard-working Cultivate Initiatives Community Beautification team offers compassionate garbage removal services throughout East Portland and East Multnomah County, providing a benefit to the entire community. We collaborate with housed and unhoused neighbors to ensure safety, livability, and dignity.
After completing our Internship program, graduates can apply to work on the Community Beautification team in a longer term time bound position to continue developing important soft skills and work ready routines before applying for other work internally or externally.
Employment Services
Removing barriers to work through training, paid experience, and community support.
Soft skill development
Paid work days
Resume building
Pathways to Employment
Training and Certifications
The Intern Program is dedicated to providing valuable skill development and paid work days to those who find barriers accessing employment through the normal pathways. Interns work alongside their cohort and supportive community while getting paid to work with our Community Beautification. This program provides meaningful structure and purpose to a lot of neighbors looking for supportive community and work experience. After completing the program, we help interns find employment and other resources through our Employment Pathways program.
When Interns finish the 5-day work program, they get connected to an Employment Specialist who enrolls them in the Employment Pathway program - which is designed to help support them in figuring out their next steps. Neighbors enrolled in this program get support getting their IDs, trade specific training and certifications, work appropriate clothing, building resumes and applying for jobs.
Property Stewardship
Elevate your property and support your community
Our team loves using our skills to meet our community’s needs. Many of our houseless neighbors are extremely skilled workers. Through Property Stewardship, our workforce members provide contracted services such as landscaping, property maintenance, and garbage removal for various businesses, organizations, and local municipalities, in addition to property maintenance at our Hub and village.
This year we’ve helped our neighbors maintain thriving properties including Kaiser Permanente, East Portland Community Investment Trust, and Hacienda CDC, just to name a few!
Property Maintenance
Landscaping Maintenance
Debris Removal and General
Health & Hygiene
Bridging the gap
Hot Showers
Laundry Services
Hygiene Supplies
Health Outreach and Education
Community Partnerships
Part of our mission to create communities that are safe, supportive, and full of opportunity is our holistic approach to health, of our individual neighbors and thus of our community as a whole. We provide hygiene services to people who otherwise cannot access them, a form of preventative care that is often overlooked.
In practice, that means our Health & Hygiene teams offer free showers, hygiene supplies, and clothing six days a week in various locations throughout East Portland and East Multnomah County.
At our Workforce Hub, there are free showers, laundry services, and hygiene supplies available five days a week. These services are operated by individuals who were previously or are currently experiencing homelessness, offering them employment and a way to reintegrate into the workforce.
We also partner with universities, nonprofits, individuals, and community organizations to do health-focused outreach, provide wound care, and connect vulnerable people with networks of care.
Learn more
Watch Nadine’s story and see for the positive impact our Workforce Development Initiative is making in the community.
“Cultivate Initiatives stirred in me a passion that I thought I’d lost. Helping me regain humanity I had forgotten existed, giving me a sense of community I know I belong to.”
Nadine - Beautification Lead
Join in the Change
Are you an employer who would like to hire people who have completed these programs?
Are you a volunteer or donor who would like to support this work through your time and resources?
Click to become part of making this change happen.