Over 100 attendees from 17 states and Washington, DC came together on April 10 and 11 in Philadelphia to provide ideas to strengthen strategies for serving women and other underrepresented populations in green jobs training programs. Designed to build capacity to apply a gender and diversity lens to training programs, the conference offered plenaries, panel discussions, and hands-on learning labs. Check out selected presentations and additional resources from the conference.
Millions of adult Americans lack the basic literacy skills necessary to perform everyday tasks requiring basic reading and math. Organizations that provide job training to lower-skilled adults have found they can better prepare workers for advanced occupational training and skill development by integrating the teaching of literacy and numeracy skills into basic occupational training programs. Alexandra Waugh's brief focuses on the model of contextualized instruction, illustrating it with case studies that use two different approaches to providing contextualized literacy: Philadelphia’s Green Job Readiness Partnership developed a customized curriculum oriented to the program’s participants and Detroit’s Green Jobs Training Program offered an off-the-shelf curriculum.
Community Workforce Agreements are a critical tool for ensuring that major construction projects create opportunities for local residents and disadvantaged workers. This brief, by Art Lujan, Lyle Balistreri, and Loree Soggs, introduces CWAs and highlights the benefits of these agreements to many stakeholders, including disadvantaged workers. The brief features lessons from Milwaukee, which is a GreenWays site, and Cleveland.
While the emerging green economy promises to add well-paid, career-track jobs, many green jobs are still considered nontraditional occupations for women. The new Pink to Green toolkit, written by Wider Opportunities for Women, to help training programs enlist women as well as men and break through age-old patterns of occupational segregation. Tools are now available that help workforce development providers improve their outreach and recruitment of women; assessment and case management for women; and critical skills training for job readiness release additional tools later this year.