Listening to the Villagers

摘要

When Mohammed Nuru came to the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) in the early 1990s, he found a small nonprofit run by a staff of two. Today, under his guidance, SLUG has a staff of one hundred (seventy-five field staff, twenty-five office) with an organizational budget of $6 million. It administers ten highly successful programs, ranging from design and construction, to habitat restoration, to making and marketing compost and soil products ("Urban Earth"), to the innovative "adopt-a-sidewalk" program. The latter is a transitional employment program that puts welfare recipients to work full time maintaining city streets and sidewalks; trains them in landscaping, computers, and other skills; and provides GED preparation.