Green Jobs

Rick Aubry, former CEO of Rubicon Programs, has re-launched Rubicon National Social Innovations as New Foundry Ventures. Rick is working with a Berkeley, Calif.-based green energy social enterprise, Rising Sun Energy Center, to develop a model for a nationally-replicable weatherization social franchise. Here's the news from the New Foundry Ventures site:

"Over the past 16 months, New Foundry Ventures has researched potential cities and climates that are optimal for operating our Energy Efficiency Enterprise. We have created a full business and operations plan and formed a partnership with Rising Sun Energy Center, a Berkeley based nonprofit with 15+ years providing green jobs training.

You know social enterprise has gained currency and prominence when it makes news in the Small Business section of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/business/smallbusiness/29sbiz.html

This is a great article that shows how nonprofits are developing green social enterprises, including SmartRoofs LLC, developed by the Bronx, NY-based nonprofit group Sustainable South Bronx, and the Chicago-based Growing Home. Both have been featured in SER--you read it here first!

Two podcasts from the SEReporter archive, featuring two leaders in green jobs, Majora Carter from Sustainable South Bronx, and Eric Weinheimer from the Cara Program in Chicago, are now online!

To listen to Eric Weinheimer, click here.
http://thecaraprogram.org

To listen to Majora Carter, click here.
http://ssbx.org

35 graduates of all ages and colors came on stage to pick up their green hard hats and diplomas last Monday from Laney Community College's 7-month Green Job Corps program in Oakland, CA. Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums was on hand to congratulate the graduates and to remind them of the historic significance of their achievement: "You are the new astronauts, going where others have not gone before: fighting poverty and pollution."

The Green Job Corps was an idea hatched back in 2007 by Van Jones and his colleagues at the Ella Baker Center. I had spoken with Ian Kim, the EBC Green Collar Jobs Program Manager and Raquel Pinderhughes before this idea received $250k in seed funding from the Oakland Public Works Dept. Read those 2007 interviews here:

Now is the time for social entrepreneurs to come forward with new ideas for green jobs. With the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act stimulus, energy and green job bills, there is a perfect storm of opportunity that we may not see again. Nonprofits are well positioned to take advantage of local, state and federal connections when competing for grant awards and contracts to develop green job training programs.

Growing Home combines the best of social enterprise and green jobs. Using federally donated lands outside Chicago, Growing Home helps formerly homeless and drug addicted clients reconnect with the land by growing organic vegetables and selling them in the city. Growing Home was featured in one of SER's first issues, and my interview with the founder and ED Harry Rhodes is still online at
http://sereporter.com/?q=node/88.

Green jobs are sprouting in New York City, with the help of nonprofit social enterprises.The Doe Fund has hired or is training 15 formerly homeless or incarcerated people to collect used cooking oil from restaurants to be made into biodiesel. The Doe Fund's RWA Resource Recovery workers expect to be collecting oil from 700 restaurants in the city.

Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/nyregion/29ink.html

Van Jones has authored a new book that you should read: The Green Collar Economy. It delivers real solutions that rescue our economy and save the environment. To see a Video Q & A with the Author, go to http://www.vanjones.net/page.php?pageid=2

In his testimony at a hearing of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee on July 30, 2008, Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google, recommended that the Feds weatherize 1 million low income homes per year for the next decade. This is a ripe opportunity for social enterprises to develop new green jobs.

Read more about it at http://jec.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.HearingsCalendar&Con...