Manpower helping Keep My Hood Good

As Manpower prepares for its quarterly job fair at all of its locations in West Tennessee, the business is also giving back to the communities of which it is a part.

The Jackson location of Manpower did that last Friday as a precursor for other events related to Earth Day, which is on Saturday, while also helping out one of the local non-profits.

“What we wanted to do was to do something that didn’t just help our business or our clients but also help out the towns we’re in,” said Vadessa Flack, the recruitment and marketing manager for Manpower. “So we challenged our locations in Jackson and in other towns in our region to find a way to give back to their communities.”

The way Jackson’s Manpower did that was by planting flowers at Keep My Hood Good’s lot on Chester Street near Mercer Park.

Keep My Hood Good is an organization that tries to help local youth by giving them something to do and somewhere to belong after school each day to help them in their academics and keep them out of trouble.

One of the ways they’ve tried to do that in recent years is with their community garden in the lot on Chester where they’ve tried to help some of the students that come to the program learn how to grow their own food and also make the vegetables grown there available for anyone in the community that might want to come pick it.

“We talked with [Keep My Hood Good Director Juanita Jones] about ways we could help out there, and this was one thing she mentioned,” Flack said.

Flack and a few others from Manpower were at the lot on Friday morning planting flowers and sprucing up the lot.

Once the yardwork was done, Jones took them to the Keep My Hood Good building on Riverside Drive and gave them a tour of the facilities.

“We learned a lot about what Keep My Hood Good’s objectives are and the obstacles they’re facing,” Flack said. “It’s amazing what they are doing there, and we essentially decided to partner with them in the future to help them however we can.”

Manpower will be having its regional job fair at all of its locations in the region on Friday.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news