Vida Verde Cooperative began to exist when Tufts University’s professor David Gute, went to a meeting of the Somerville Immigrants Services Providers Group, looking for project ideas which could be developed and funded by Tufts in partnership with community organizations. That day and at that time the idea of a housecleaners women’s coop was born. Monica Chianelli, who had been living in the United States for four years, was also a Somerville resident who worked as a housecleaner and a representative of the Brazilian Women’s Group at that meeting, immediately spoke about the need to create a women’s coop that addressed the heasecleaners’ health issues and the exploitation practiced by some schedule’s owners.

The partnership between Tufts University and the Immigrants Services Providers Group, the NIOSH funding, the work and effort of all of us, housecleaners made Vida Verde possible.

We housecleaners are committed to no only alert about the health risks of using chemicals to clean but also to show that each one of us, and any other woman or man who work in housecleaning, can and should have its own business or schedule and must not be exploited by unscrupulous people. Vida Verde is here to stay.

We are committed to encourage people to switch from toxic to green cleaning products. For this reason, we run workshops where we talk about how harmful the chemicals can be for our health and how easy it is to make and to use the non-toxic cleaning products.

In the last four years, we have trained about 300 Brazilians in Massachusetts. We have also spread the word to the American society and other ethnic groups in the United States about green products. In November of 2009, for example, we participated in the National Alliance of Domestic Workers Conference in California and we were able to share our knowledge with hundreds of workers from all around the country.

If you are interested in having our training in your community, please, fell free to contact us to know where and when will be our next training.

These trainings are partially funded by the University of Massachusetts-Lowell’s Toxic Use Reduction Institute (TURI).