Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative

SIGN UP for updates and news

New Bedford Awarded Green Jobs Training Grant
from US Conference of Mayors!

On June 10, 2010 I took a trip with Mayor Scott Lang and Gloria William, Executive Director of P.A.C.E. YouthBuild, to Oklahoma City. We made the journey West to accept a prestigious $300,000 award – the U.S. Conference of Mayors selected the City of New Bedford’s partnership with P.A.C.E. YouthBuild to receive a grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation to support and expand training programs for Green Jobs. New Bedford was the only small city in the country to receive this award. For medium and large cities Durham, NC and Philadelphia, PA were selected.

P.A.C.E. Youth Build’s Green Energy Solutions aims to address gaps in the Energy Efficiency training landscape in the region and work in collaboration with other training efforts in the region. The program will provide energy efficiency training in both residential and commercial techniques including certifications and training for entry and advanced levels. Green Energy Solutions will train local contractors, experienced construction workers, and inexperienced residents interested in entering the energy efficiency sector by providing basic energy efficiency training to newcomers, and more advanced levels of training and support for entrepreneurs that is affordable to low- and moderate-income residents.

Arriving in Oklahoma between an unprecedented series of 32 tornadoes in one month and an epic flood emphasized the ever-increasing importance of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Green Energy Solutions was designed specifically to meet the workforce needs of the Community Retrofit Program a City Program that will work to improve the energy efficiency of 5000 units of housing and small businesses over the next 5 years. This program will need a well-trained workforce to meet its goals. The training that will be provided through the US Conference of Mayors Grant will play an important role in making sure this workforce is available.

In the same week, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth was also notified that their grant application to DOE to establish a regional Green Jobs training center had been awarded. The collective impact of this influx of resources into the City will have a significant positive impact on the community and enable the success of the City’s many sustainability goals.

Effective workforce development strategies are a key component to building a sustainable and inclusive Green Economy. The goal of the Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative is to align this training with real job opportunities by raising awareness about energy efficiency and other elements of sustainability and connecting residents with resources to participate in the Green Economy.

If you’d like to help contribute to this exciting positive momentum, contact Kalia to find out about volunteer and other opportunities to support these efforts.

Kalia Lydgate
Director of Marion Institute's Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative
City of New Bedford Mayoral Fellow
508.951.4026
klydgate@marioninstitute.org
www.marioninstitute.org/green-jobs

Barn-raisings

Barn-raising #1
Thank you to everyone who came to last month's Weatherization Barn-raising Party on February 20 - it was a huge success!

We had over 20 volunteers of all ages and backgrounds and it could not have been a more beautiful, sunny day.  PACE youthBuild brilliantly led the teams of volunteers in weather stripping, caulking windows, installing fiberglass insulation in the basement, and a host of other tasks throughout the day.  Everyone worked together to seal up air leaks and make the home more energy efficient.  When the work was finished, we all gathered around a pot of warm cachupa and got to know each other.

A huge thank you to Maria Robinson and Lawrence Tobey, the homeowners, for opening their home to us, and to New Bedford Village for helping to get the word out to local residents about this opportunity.  Thank you also to SEEAL for making these events possible through their Southcoast Climate Change Challenge Mini-Grant.

About
The Marion Institute, in collaboration with local organizations, the New Bedford Economic Development Council and the New Bedford Mayor's Office, presents a new program: the Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative.

The objective of the initiative is two-fold:1. to ensure that New Bedford accesses American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding, which will support green business and green job development and2. to ensure that the city's initiatives specifically benefit and are accessible to low income communities and communities of color in the city.The overarching goal is to help New Bedford become a national leader in the green jobs and sustainability movement.

Funding opportunities through ARRA are abundant, with over $60 billion allotted specifically to green jobs initiatives nationally and hundreds of millions of dollars coming to Massachusetts alone. The opportunity is enormous. New Bedford is particularly well positioned to participate in, and benefit from, this movement to build an equitable green economy that will restore communities and the environment.

However, there's a lot of work to be done to access this funding and not much time to do it. Most of the ARRA money will be designated by June and must be used by September of 2010. Many of the grant applications are due in late spring. What's more, ARRA has a strict "Use it or Lose it" policy if the money is not used effectively and efficiently, it will be reallocated to other states and cities.

Recognizing the urgency of this opportunity, the Marion Institute specifically sought out funds from outside the city of New Bedford to create this Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative. "This initiative is a natural outgrowth of the Marion Institute's Annual Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change Conference," said the Marion Institute's Executive Director, Desa VanLaarhoven. "The Marion Institute and our board, led by Michael and Margie Baldwin, are responding to the consistent requests to support and serve the community of New Bedford not for just one weekend a year but throughout the year. We felt that this was the best way to lend a hand."

Kalia Lydgate, formerly the Youth Coordinator for the Marion Institute and the Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change Conference, is the Director of the Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative. In addition to her work at the Marion Institute, Lydgate co-founded the Massachusetts Green Jobs Coalition (MAGJC), a statewide organization that played a crucial role in ensuring that Pathways out of Poverty language was included in the Massachusetts Green Jobs Act (H4844), and has been working on Green Jobs initiatives locally and at the state level for the past two years. The majority of her time will be spent in New Bedford but she will also continue her work at the state- and national-levels, working to put New Bedford in the National spotlight.

A large percentage of ARRA funds will go towards projects that improve the energy efficiency of buildings, which are responsible for upwards of 40% of carbon emissions. New Bedford, with a 15.2% unemployment rate and seemingly endless inventory of old buildings and homes, is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the ARRA. Energy efficiency work creates both business opportunities and jobs, while lowering energy bills for consumers and reducing fossil fuel emissions.

Temistocles Blessed, Community Service and Green Solutions Coordinator of P.A.C.E. YouthBuild, sees firsthand the value in this opportunity, "the youth of the city of New Bedford need real hope and real opportunity. The Sustainability Movement and Green Jobs provide them with a way to achieve equitable employment, creatively help the environment, and become leaders of today's green economy."

The idea of building a green economy is not new to New Bedford. The city has deep roots in the Environmental Justice movement and a strong grassroots green jobs movement. Moreover, Mayor Lang and the New Bedford Economic Development Council have made renewable energy a priority for the city. Van Jones to the BBB video from his 2006 BBB presentation, the founder of Green for All and now Special Advisor on Green Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation in the Obama White House, has made several visits to speak at Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change Conference in the last three years, including in New Bedford. He specifically praised New Bedford's efforts in his speech at the National Powershift09 Conference in Washington DC in March.

"We will have succeeded if we eliminate the need to talk about the green economy, because the green economy simply is the economy. This issue is bigger than just weatherization jobs, it's about making our systems more sustainable."
 
Collaboration between different sectors, industry, community based organizations, labor, education and elected officials, will be essential in creating entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.  Kalia will act as a connector in New Bedford, MA and nationally. We are hopeful that we can bring together the right people and add some energy to the great ideas and projects that already exist.  This is an open-source movement. We need to pool resources, share ideas and act quickly. We may not get another chance like this.

The way ARRA is set up, much of the responsibility for accessing these funds falls on Municipalities, and to a lesser extent, non-profit organizations. However, many of the important stakeholders are already stretched too thin. Without adequate time and energy dedicated to identifying and planning for these funds, New Bedford could miss its opportunity. "In her two and a half years of working with the New Bedford community, Kalia has been a solid force in building sustainable bridges among a broad base of organizations, and involving the youth in that process," says Ben Gilbarg, Executive Director of 3rd EyE Unlimited. "Now more than ever, her collaborative spirit is needed to assure that New Bedford is a leader of the Green-Collar Economy and that those opportunities reach the people who need them."

We are facing extreme crises environmentally, socially and economically. Building an equitable green economy could solve all three problems at once. By building an economy that reduces our impact on the environment and puts people back to work, there is an opportunity to strengthen our economy, our communities and to restore the earth all at the same time. At the heart of this movement is the need to rebuild community. Changing our energy sources isn't enough. We need to change the way our systems work and the way we relate to each other and to the earth.

The Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative works closely with the Massachusetts Green Jobs Coalition to stay connected and share best practices with efforts in other communities statewide. To find out what is happening across the state, visit: www.magjc.org.

If you would like to help support the goals of the Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative, please donate here.

Donate by mail
Please make checks made payable to the "Marion Institute" with "Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative" noted in the memo line and send to:

Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative
c/o Marion Institute
202 Spring St.
Marion, MA  02738

Ph:  508.748.0816
Fax:  508.748.1976

Kalia Lydgate
Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative Director
klydgate@marioninstitute.org