January 2022 ​Featured Interview

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How Do Your Gardens Grow?

Interview with
Wendie Blanchard
Founder of Arthur & Friends

About Wendie:

Wendie Blanchard is the founder and national director of Arthur & Friends, a social entrepreneurial training and employment program that provides meaningful community employment and training opportunities for people with disabilities and individuals with socioeconomic disadvantages who have for many years been considered unemployable. She has successfully developed and directed this program since its initial pilot in 2007. Under her directorship, this program has grown from a small model to a national program for the training and employment of disabled and marginalized citizens.
 
Prior to launching Arthur & Friends, she worked in public education, providing leadership and administrative support to establish educational programs and manage marketing projects and outreach activities to Sussex, Morris and Warren County communities, businesses and residents. She developed Programs of Study that met the socioeconomic needs of the public and the Carl Perkins Act as well as requests for personal and corporate enrichment programs.
 
Additionally, Wendie recruited faculty and instructors for workshops and in-services aimed at K-12 teacher training, curriculum development and student achievement. She developed fundraising strategies, wrote grant proposals, counseled teachers, managed staff and assisted with the development of learning communities while teaching several dozen specialized in-services for 21 school districts. She also developed training for 52 nonprofit agencies in Sussex County as well as area business.

In June of 2011, she was awarded the New Jersey Heroes Award by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his wife Mary Pat Christie for her work with Arthur & Friends. The program has been recognized by NJ BIZ as the most innovative Non-Profit of 2010, Edible Communities 2009 Food Hero, the Wallace Berry Foundation as an unsung Hero for 2010 and 2014, and the Board of Agriculture Hero of the Year 2010.
 
The organization's recognition continued with Wendie being acknowledged by the White House during the Obama administration as one of 50 Champions of Change. An extensive report about Arthur & Friends was published in February 2011 in the Let's Move! blog.

More About Arthur & Friends:

"Through a series of training programs, the employees learn about specialized agri-business, retail sales, and online business development. The integrated work environment allows the employees with disabilities to become economically self-sufficient and occupationally marketable should they ever decide to seek employment with another business organization or start their own. In addition to the myriad of occupational skills gained in the training programs, Arthur and Friends offers its associates with disabilities an opportunity to gain fuller access and participation in their communities in a sustainable way."   
​~ Let's Move! (February 2011)​

Arthur & Friends began in 2008 as a social entrepreneurial training and employment program that provides meaningful community employment and training opportunities for individuals 18 years of age and older with disabilities so that they may live, work, and fully participate in their communities. In 2010, Arthur & Friends expanded to provide these same services to ex-offenders who face many of the same challenges as persons with disabilities. The focus is on creating and expanding employment opportunities, especially for people with disabilities and individuals with socioeconomic disadvantages who have for many years been considered unemployable. These same individuals are often the poorest citizens and the most marginalized in society. This project began as a pilot for a replicable model, which has been adapted throughout the nation. 

​Carol Lippert Gray, co-associate editor, spoke with Wendie Blanchard about the inspiration behind the founding of Arthur & Friends and how it has grown over the years to include diverse communities and nurture over 1,000 alumni.
 
How it all began…

​An impromptu kitchen conversation with her nephew Arthur germinated an idea. The idea led Wendie Blanchard to create a hydroponic greenhouse to provide training and employment to Arthur (who is developmentally disabled) and adults like him, many of whom previously were considered unemployable.

The first greenhouse opened in northwest New Jersey in 2008. The concept has now blossomed into a network of 28 affiliates across the country (some with adorably punny names, like Lettuce Dream) as well as in Nepal and Dubai.
 
But back to the kitchen. It was 2006. Arthur, then 28, had had a bad day at work. Coincidentally, Wendie had had a bad day, too, and they commiserated over dinner. “Arthur asked what I’d do if I could do anything. I said I’d love to grow produce and employ people with disabilities,” Wendie says.
 
To which Arthur replied, “Aunt Wendie, you have a choice [about what you can do], and I don’t.”
 
The seed was planted. Wendie, an avid gardener who had an at-home business manufacturing and marketing hydroponic gardening tables, began to research her idea further. She taught herself about greenhouse construction, irrigation systems, and all the other components that needed to come together.

Wendie and Arthur
Photo Courtesy: Arthur & Friends

By 2007, she was ready to begin and wrote a grant proposal requesting $50,000 in start-up money. She got it. She called the start-up Arthur & Friends. It became a program of the Northwest New Jersey Community Action Program (NORWESCAP), a private, nonprofit corporation established in 1965 to serve the low-income populations of several neighboring counties. The next year, she requested $500,000. She got it and was on her way to establishing a replicable model.

Continued expansion…
 
In 2010, the program expanded to offer the same services to ex-offenders who, Wendie says, “face the same challenges as their disabled neighbors.”
 
Then there was an appearance on NPR, to talk about hydroponics and creating jobs for marginalized populations. As a result, “The phone started ringing from all over the world asking about replicating the program,” she says. So, she began consulting for other organizations, including conducting feasibility studies and developing training and employment programs.  
 
Fast forward to 2019. Mary Pat Christie, the wife of then-governor Chris Christie, named Wendie the fourth recipient of the New Jersey Heroes Award. “I’m so humbled. This is so wonderful, but I’m not the hero. The heroes are the people who support the program and the people who work the program,” Wendie told the Newark Star-Ledger at the time.

Photo Courtesy: Arthur & Friends

​Then, Valerie Jarrett, who worked with the White House Office of Public Engagement under the Obama administration, invited Wendie to Washington to speak to veterans’ programs about expanding their efforts to other communities. During her talk, she says she quoted one of the program participants. When a visitor touring a greenhouse told this young man that Arthur & Friends “is like teaching a man to fish,” the young man replied, “No. We’re building the ponds.” The audience reaction to this remark, she says, was audible. President Obama subsequently named Wendie to his Champions of Change program.
 
After that, she says, “The program just exploded.” It now includes physically disabled people. Some are adults who became disabled later in life through disease or accident. “The disabled community is insightful, happy, on time, grateful, having fun, and proud of themselves,” she says. “They support each other and develop confidence and a sense of belonging.” Wendie offers the example of two male greenhouse colleagues, one who had no use of his right arm and the other who was missing part of his left. “They collaborate to make it work,” she says.

​Today, almost 14 years since the first greenhouse opened its doors, Arthur lives in a group home and works at a company that disassembles electronic equipment.
 
When asked how many Arthur & Friends alumni there are, she thinks for a moment, exhales a deep breath, and says “Well over 1,000 is a modest estimate.” They’ve left the program with life skills, basic work skills, and specialized agri-business skills. They’ve achieved a level of self-sufficiency and engagement in their communities previously thought impossible. And the surrounding community can access fresh produce grown within a small environmental footprint. Additionally, colleges and universities now send student interns to the greenhouses for hands-on experience. 
 
The whole experience has been a whirlwind. So, when asked where she finds sanctuary, Wendie says, not surprisingly “It’s in my garden. At the end of the day, even cold, crisp days, sitting in my walled garden is calming and meditative. Your thoughts get crystallized.”

Photo Courtesy: Arthur & Friends

Wendie considers herself semi-retired (which means she’s not taking on full new programs but will provide limited consulting and continues to teach greenhouse management and agricultural marketing at Sussex County Community College in Newton, NJ). She lives in Stillwater, New Jersey with her husband, Brian. Her elder son, Noah, teaches math and physics in New Jersey. Her younger son, Ian, has founded and built four schools in Nepal. She dotes on her three granddaughters. ​​

Do You Have the Seed of an Idea You Want to Nurture?
 
Wendie’s advice for starting a new venture:
~ Tell everyone you want to do it. Get the word out. Go for it.
~ Talk to people who serve the population you want to serve. Seventy percent of disabled people live at or below the poverty level.
~ You can piggyback on an existing program or start fresh.
~ Do your research.
~ Don’t keep it to yourself because you can’t do it alone. There is a huge population that needs to be served and people care.
~ Develop a brief mission statement.
~ Clearly define the population you want to serve.
~ Crunch the numbers.
~ Break it all down into ten steps and work on them every day.

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TO DONATE:
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For additional information or to make a donation to an affiliate in your area:
Contact Wendie Blanchard

Readers may also donate to Somerset Hills Learning Institute in New Jersey
Please identify the following on any donations: This is for the hydroponics project.