(504) 495-7904 Your Sustainable Lumber Warehouse (504) 495-7904

Career builders
by Leah Bartos

New Orleans area work force training programs have been
credited with transforming at-risk youths into chefs and
shipbuilders.

Now a group of nonprofits is tapping the emerging green
economy to help more disadvantaged young people find
jobs.

Lance Coleman, 24, graduated last year from the Louisiana
Green Corps — a coalition of three green construction
nonprofits that provide paid job training to at-risk New
Orleans youths through environmental conservation
projects. It is paid for partly by the U.S. Department of
Labor and the Corps Network.

With the help of an AmeriCorps education stipend he
earned as a corps member, Coleman plans to study
architecture at the Savannah College of Art and Design
and eventually start a green architectural firm, influenced
partly by his past experience in construction and enhanced
by his newfound knowledge in green building practices.

“I was told all through school that I would never make
it to college, that there was no reason for me to go,”
the New Orleans native said.

Since May 2008, Louisiana Green Corps has enrolled
176 people, ages 17 to 26, in its work force training
programs. Many were referred to the program by Orleans
Parish public defenders, social services agencies or
religious institutions.

The group’s three member organizations — the
Old City Building Center, the Alliance for Affordable
Energy and the Arc of Greater New Orleans —
provide job training in deconstruction, organic landscaping
and weatherization, respectively.

Dawn Falgout-Loebig, who heads the Old City
Building Center, created the Louisiana Green Corps’ work
force development program partly in response to the influx
of out-of-state workers filling New Orleans area construction
jobs after Hurricane Katrina — and edging out the locals who
sought those jobs.

The Old City Building Center now provides paid job training
to young adults, many of whom are under-employed,
parolees or otherwise disadvantaged. Employees receive
$8.55 an hour, slightly more than minimum wage, and work
32 hours a week.

Ray Guidry, the Alliance for Affordable Energy’s work force
development program manager, said that though there are
many ways a job can be environmentally sustainable, it
needs to be economically sustainable as well. Community
sustainability is also key, he said, noting the organization’s
efforts to prepare a local skilled work force in anticipation
of new green jobs coming from federal stimulus money.

For instance, Guidry said, the Louisiana Housing Finance
Agency will receive $59 million in stimulus money during
the next three years to weatherize homes in the state,
including 6,000 in New Orleans.

More than $600 million in federal stimulus money will go
toward green job training programs nationwide.

“There are a lot of different shades of green. We think
that the green-collar jobs, No. 1, are quality jobs.
They’re not low-wage, typical labor jobs. They take
training and certification in some cases,” Guidry said.

The Alliance’s trainees participate in a job shadow that
has led to permanent employment for some. Two recent
graduates now work for Brotherhood Way, a weatherization
contractor, and another works for South Coast Solar
installing solar panels for the Make It Right homes in
the Lower 9th Ward.

In private industry, workers installing solar panels start
at about $10 an hour, but Guidry said he believes there
are advancement opportunities.

Along with the technical challenges associated with creating
a green work force comes the cultural challenge of inspiring
green values, which Guidry believes are more contagious
among the younger generation.

“They’re not hooked on the old, flamboyant, heavy-usage
economy. Don’t get me wrong, if you gave them a Hummer,
they’d sure as hell drive it over a Prius. I’m not going that far,
but they’re not stuck in their ways like the older generation,”
Guidry said.

Since becoming one of Louisiana Green Corps’ first graduates,
Coleman has stayed involved with the program, eventually
working his way up to his current crew leader position at the
Old City Building Center.

Coleman, though, may be an anomaly among his peers.

“It’s sad to say, but everyone else that I hung out with in
high school is either dead or in jail. And when I say jail, I mean
doing 25 to life,” Coleman said. “So I tell them about it, and
they’re like, ‘Yeah, I could look into that when I get out.’”•

Mercy Corps Helps the Old City Building Center