Environmental work in Donholm isn't only volunteer activity, for a small but growing group of young residents, it's becoming an actual skill set worth being paid for. Our youth green livelihoods track trains participants in basic landscaping, tree care and compound greening work.
What the training actually covers
Training covers practical skills: correct planting technique, seasonal pruning, mulching, and simple compound landscaping design, skills with real demand among estates and households wanting to green their own compounds but lacking the know-how to do it well. Sessions are hands-on rather than classroom-based, run largely on our own nursery and active planting sites, where participants practise directly on live trees and real planting conditions rather than a simulated exercise.
Participants typically start on our own sites, our nursery and planting corridors, before progressing to supervised paid work for estates and households that request landscaping help through us, a structured path from volunteer to paid practitioner that's proven more effective than a single training session followed by participants being left to find their own clients.
What graduates go on to do
Several graduates of the programme have gone on to take up paid landscaping work for estates and households directly, work that traces back to skills first picked up volunteering with us. In a couple of cases, that's turned into a fairly regular income stream, ongoing maintenance contracts with estates rather than one-off jobs.
We see this as one of the more durable outcomes of our environmental work: skills that outlast any single clean-up or planting day, and that give participants a reason to stay engaged with environmental work well beyond their initial volunteering. The track is open to any Donholm resident aged 16 and above; details are on our Get Involved page.