Legacy Farms is a small non-profit with an educational garden at Temple Hall Regional Park and Fabbioli Cellars, just outside of Leesburg. Our neurodiverse team of staff, mentors, and apprentices grows and delivers specialty-cut flowers to area businesses and food pantries. This specific role will work with apprentices in the garden on-site to develop work training skills and job experience.
Do you have a background in special education, social work, therapies, OR do you have experience in gardening and a desire to support neurodivergent individuals? Are you available to work outside 7-14 hours per week, coaching up to four neurodivergent apprentices seeking to develop their job skills, self-awareness, and ability to self-advocate in future employment positions?
Growing Together, our mentor/apprentice program, is focused on job skills training, mentoring, and facilitating increased personal development for neurodivergent individuals ages 16+. Our core clientele includes neurodivergent individuals with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and anxiety – neurotypes that vary from perceived norms and affect an individual’s ability to achieve employment and independence in the current job market.
We hire mentors for a variety of job contracts, structured around a clearly designed 7-step framework. Mentors provide job coaching for neurodivergent individuals to introduce work skills, help develop personal awareness, and address specific challenges each individual has experienced in getting and keeping a job.
This is an opportunity to give back to your community while increasing your skills in working with neurodiverse individuals and enjoying a calm garden environment. You do not need gardening experience! You do need patience, calm communication skills, and understanding of the executive function, self-regulation, and self-awareness challenges and gifts associated with neurodiversity. We prioritize a mindful, relationally based work environment where communication is key to learning and self-development. We welcome challenges and setbacks as learning opportunities. We believe that a balanced, well-regulated nervous system is the first step in increasing executive function, organizational, and emotional regulation on the job.
Key Responsibilities
- Work on garden projects with small teams of neurodivergent individuals ages 16+ who are engaged in educational training and paid vocational work as a bridge to independent employment
- Review, assess, and prioritize apprentice(s)’ personal goals and skills development quarterly, ensuring clarity on progress plans in daily work
- Create supports and materials that move apprentices along a continuum of progress and independence in job skills
- Adjust daily tasks to garden demands (as needed) and help apprentices to clarify last-minute adjustments, changes to focus, and ability to meet deliverables
- Work alongside apprentices to complete tasks that help maintain Legacy Farms gardens
- Check in with assigned apprentice(s) on areas of challenge and strategies for success related to responsibilities
- Participate in a 4-week online mindfulness 101 course for certification (paid by Legacy Farms)
- Maintain professional standards of behavior and interaction that embody and set an example of an effective employee, including such qualities as: arriving to work on time and prepared, maintaining a positive attitude, managing personal emotions in regard to challenges, frustrations, etc. and speaking mindfully about personal approach to managing those feelings
- As appropriate to experience, guide other mentors, entrepreneurial apprentices, and mentors-in-training to progress taking on leadership roles
- Assist in periodic farmers markets to coach apprentices on products, sales, and social interaction
Other Beneficial Experience
- A background in mindfulness practice (not required, training will be provided by Legacy Farms)
- Enthusiasm for growing flowers and/or entrepreneurial and small business development
- Understanding of issues surrounding neurodiversity empowerment
Hours
March to November; 2-3 days per week, 8:30am-12noon (in garden); additional days/hours possible
Location
Garden hours at Temple Hall Farm Regional Park 15855 Limestone School Rd, Leesburg and/or Fabbioli Cellars, 15669 Limestone School Rd, Leesburg, VA 20176
