Green Collar Job Training Program Focuses on At-risk Youth

The city of Santa Fe has found that two of its problems, a high percentage of high school drop outs and a lack of green collar workers, have the same solution -- a green collar job training program that recruits from a pool of at risk youths.

The Green Collar Job Training Program's aim was to develop a community response to the rising drop-out rate and the difficulty many local business face finding qualified local employees. The program consists of on-the-job training, academic skill building and job counseling.

The first trainees in the program, which was unveiled on September 24th by the program partners who include the City of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Alliance, and ¡YouthWorks!, were a group of six local youths.

Trainees work four full days each week and earn the local living wage of US $9.50 an hour. Participating businesses contribute the first US $6.50 per hour while the remaining US $3.00 per hour is covered by the program. If the trainees choose to pursue a career in their given trade they have the potential to make significantly more. According Cedar Mountain Solar Partner and General Manager Boaz Soifer, installers can make up to US $20 an hour. Wages only increase from there with further certification or a journeyman's license.

Each Friday the trainees attend a class at the Santa Fe Community College for credit. The class was developed by ¡YouthWorks! and Earth Care International and is centered on concepts of sustainability but also focuses on college readiness, career exploration, basic science, math and writing skills.

Three local businesses participated in the pilot phase of the program, Cedar Mountain Solar Systems, a solar plumbing and heating contractor, Shanahan and Associates, a green contractor, and Los Amigos Educational Resource Center, which provides weatherization and energy efficiency services to disadvantaged communities.

The program came about through a series of round-table discussions between the Santa Fe Alliance, the Santa Fe Public Schools, the Living Wage Network, the City of Santa Fe Economic Development Division, the Santa Fe Community College, Earth Care International and local business leaders.

According to ¡YouthWorks! Education Coordinator Tobe Bott-Lyons, their pilot, which involved six youths and three businesses was funded by the Santa Fe Economic Development Division. They where given US $29,000, which was able to fund everything from supplementing the trainees income to covering the staff that ¡YouthWorks! dedicated to the program. The program has been invited by the city to apply for a grant for Innovation in Economic Development. The proposal is for US $160,000 and Bott-Lyons says that with that money "we would be on our feet and ready to go."

According to Cedar Mountain Solar Partner's Soifer, the benefit of his company's participation in the program was that it helped offset employee training costs and that the company was able to hire one of the trainees. Because Santa Fe's has a high drop-out rate, Soifer is pleased that the program "helps those who have dropped out find supportive and economic ways to stay in the community."

The Santa Fe Alliance, a business membership organization, had the role in the partnership of promoting the program, recruiting and training employers on mentorship skills, tax benefits and various other issues relating to participating in the program.

Soifer, who is also on the board of the Santa Fe Alliance, said that the main reason the Alliance participated in the program was that "green jobs are the kind of jobs that can't be outsourced."

According to Green For All Field Director Jeremy Hays, Green Collar Job Training programs for the underprivileged have the potential to help solve the two major crises facing the country today, the energy crisis and the finical crisis. At the same time, these types of training programs have the potential to lift people out of poverty by giving them a leg up in the expanding green economy. Finally programs like these have an environmental benefit that can't be ignored, which Hays summarized neatly saying that "they insure that the people who most need the work do the work that most needs to be done."