Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Background

As long as poverty and unemployment remain barriers to self-empowerment in underserved communities, there will be a need for new living wage jobs and workforce training.

The U.S. - and the Bay Area in particular - is witnessing a booming economy based on the growth of sustainable and environmental products, services, industry and technologies.

Businesses will need employees that are trained to take on "green-collar jobs" - manual labor jobs in businesses whose goods and services directly improve environmental quality [1]. Many businesses working on energy efficiency and solar projects are especially constrained by the lack of eligible, trained workers.

As jobs emerge in the green economy - such as installing solar panels and constructing green buildings - the workforce needs training to tap into these new employment opportunities.

Green-collar jobs hold the promise to provide employment as a way out of poverty while bringing positive environmental change. Effort is needed on local and national levels to ensure that underserved communities are included in and benefit from the green revolution.

Organization Mission

The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. It promotes positive alternatives to violence and incarceration through four campaigns.

The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign creates opportunities in the green economy for poor people and people of color through policy advocacy, public outreach, and an employment pipeline – the Green Jobs Corps. Through this campaign, the Ella Baker Center is working to ensure that this green economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

Full Circle Fund Role

The Ella Baker Center is at the forefront of the green-collar jobs movement, working to make Oakland a model for programs throughout the nation. In the Ella Baker Center, Full Circle Fund members recognized a unique opportunity to support an innovative organization and its visionary leader, Van Jones. Our work with the Ella Baker Center has the potential to significantly impact economic growth, community well-being and environmental change.

Full Circle Fund's Environment/Energy Circle members will partner with the Ella Baker Center to successfully launch the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a city-wide job training and paid internship program that will prepare low-income or at-risk youths for careers in the green and clean tech industries.

The project will focus on building the Corps as a model workforce training program and ensure its long-term success, including:

• Provide strategic guidance to the Green Employer Council, and cultivate and incentivize business participation.
• Ensure financial and programmatic sustainability of the Corps by examining funding options and earned-income strategies.
• Implement a public policy strategy to both generate demand and financing for projects that will employ Corps participants as well as promote the actual employment of participants.
• Create a toolkit to summarize best practices and lessons learned to foster national replication of the Corps.

Sources:

¹ "Green Collar Jobs: An Analysis of the Capacity of Green Businesses to Provide High Quality Jobs for Men and Women With Barriers to Employment" (PDF), Raquel Pinderhuges, The City of Berkeley Office of Energy and Sustainable Development, 2007

NAME: Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
LOCATION: Oakland
WEB: ellabakercenter.org
GRANT TERM: 2007-2009
TEAM LEADS: Wade Crowfoot and Andrew Byrnes

"What we're trying to do at the Ella Baker Center - and what we're so proud to be doing in partnership with Full Circle Fund - is to birth a new green economy and create green pathways out of poverty for young people."

Van Jones

Co-Founder and President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights