Amanda Greenwood discusses working with youth, building a business with passion and purpose, and staying connected to the community through her love of flower arrangement. Amanda shares how Petals that Inspire brings value to the community with the creative art of floral design. The initiative partners with Star House, which provides resources and job skills training to youth experiencing homelessness between the ages of 14 and 25. If you listen to the People Helping People podcast often, that story should sound familiar.
Petals that Inspire uses a business model similar to the social enterprise that I manage, Wild Tiger Tees. In fact, Petals that Inspire is our sister program. This initiative is more proof that social enterprises and business ideas can be existing ideas with a new twist. Since starting in March 2020, the initiative needed to learn to adapt their business model from the beginning. Amanda breaks down the operations of the social enterprise. Her explanations describe studio space, the main process of training the youth for flower arrangement, and the journey of the initiative’s pivot during the pandemic.
In our conversation, Amanda explains that the initiative’s focus isn’t so much on training the youth to become floral designers, but helping them develop soft skills. Those are the skills that are necessary when entering the workforce. She also emphasizes how the initiative provides a safe atmosphere for natural conversation and fun. When talking about working with the youth, Amanda dives into the moments of teaching the youth about flowers, giving the youth basic stability, and her realization in understanding the importance of that stability.
Being in Columbus, Ohio, the city shows the power of support and having a community that comes together to create change. A network of support establishes an easier flow to building social enterprises, as well as raising the awareness within the communities. Amanda says:
“I think a big part of the mission of all these social enterprises is yes, we want to provide direct support to these programs that are helping, but we also want to let the community know there’s a need here and we can come together to address it and to propel our community forward to be a leader to other cities around the country to do this.”
By connecting people with ideas and resources and putting people together, you don’t have to solve the entire problem on your own, but quite often, there are little things that we can do in order to help make the world a much better place. Forging that central place where passion can be used for a purpose opens a new level of service. Petals that Inspire taps into that theme of collecting resources, and allowing those resources to fuel impact in the community.
Despite working 8-10 hours at a day job, Amanda finds the time and energy to give to Petals that Inspire. It’s thanks to the initiative having a combination of her passion and purpose.
If you would like to learn more, you can visit her website, Instagram or Facebook.
