THE NALPEXPERIENCE
The NALP Foundation is Leading in the Industry inWorkforce Development and Research
By Jill Odom
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LANDSCAPE PROFESSIONALS Foundation has not been resting on its laurels. The Foundation and its donors have long supported student scholarships and education and now it is embarking on exciting new projects to strengthen the future of the landscape industry.
you can set up a live chat or choose from volunteer opportunities where educators have requested particular volunteers for their students.
WORLD OF WORK WEEK The Foundation was also involved in the World of Work Week, also known as World of Landscape series, which took place Oct. 4-8. During this week, 11 presentations on different landscape industry careers were shared through the Nepris platform.
NEPRIS
Nepris is a web-based system that connects educators and learners with a network of industry professionals, virtually, bringing real-world relevance and career exposure to students. Nepris also provides a skills-based volunteering platform for organizations to extend education outreach and build their brand for the future workforce. With Nepris, the Foundation can give the landscape industry a platform to share with students and educators about the exciting world where landscape and lawn care professionals care for the environment.
“It creates opportunities for students to gain a real-life understanding of a professional career in the landscape industry by integrating academic skills, personal interests, and industry-specific competencies that can help drive our future workforce,” says Jenn Myers, executive director of NALP Foundation. “Professionals can share their skills, expertise and work experiences to all students helping to create the next generation of innovators. The platform helps remove barriers to reach students, provides educators the tools they need for career awareness and makes it easy for landscape professionals to share their skills and expertise to students across the country.” Through Nepris, educators and students can search and explore industry careers and seek guidance directly from industry professionals. With the skills-
based volunteer platform, landscape pro- fessionals have the opportunity to offer a virtual chat on the topic of their choice and reach over 135,000 educators and 1.5 million students across the country. “The presentation is held live and recorded, and then resides in the Nepris library where educators can browse, check out and present previously record- ed ‘chats’ to their students,” Myers says. Currently, NALP has 20 plus guest speakers already in the system. Teddy Russell, president-elect of the Founda- tion, has already conducted a Nepris presentation on how he got involved in the industry and what experiences he has had. He says the students in the session were not aware of all the dif- ferent aspects and career opportunities available ranging from typical landscape operations to financial, robotics, technol- ogy, hardscapes, irrigation, etc. “Bringing awareness to our industry will not only cultivate more people to join but also passing our knowledge on to the next generation offers great self-satis- faction,” Russell says. The NALP Foundation welcomes all lawn and landscape professionals, sister non-profit associations, college educa- tors, suppliers, manufacturers, etc. who want to participate, to take advantage of Nepris. To present live on the Nepris platform, simply go to the Foundation’s landing page (
landscapeprofessionals.org/foun- dation) and click the sign-up button to set up your profile. Once that is complete
SKILLSUSA Aside from reaching more students in the classroom, the Foundation is also working on a partnership with SkillsUSA to develop a landscape-specific competition for high school students at the National SkillsUSA Championships. These competitive events begin at the local and state levels before moving on to the national competition. The Foun- dation will participate in a demonstration event in June 2022 with the intent to co- ordinate a national competition, annually, beginning June 2023. “Our goal is to get high school students excited and interested in the professional landscape industry,” Myers says. “Not only does this give us the opportunity to get in front of students in- terested in our industry, but it also allows us to influence other students involved in SkillsUSA as well provide a gateway for contractors and state associations to participate in their local community high schools as well as in their state compe- titions.”
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION STUDY The Foundation also recently conducted a study to develop an industry demographic workforce baseline and to identify recruiting and retention opportunities for employee development. Close to 300 contractors participated in the workforce demographic survey which included local, regional, and national landscape companies. The report provides data by state,
Scan here to download your FREE copy diversity and inclusion study.
Scan here to learn more about Nepris
National Association of Landscape Professionals 11
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
