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Going Green: What the Workforce System Can Do to Leverage Opportunities for Job Seekers in the Emerging Clean Energy Economy Webinar June 2009 [Robb Sewell] Good afternoon, this is Robb Sewell and on behalf of the NTAR Leadership Center, I would like to welcome you to today's webinar, Going Green: What the Workforce System Can Do to Leverage Opportunities for Job Seekers in the Emerging Clean Energy Economy. Before we begin, I'd like to take a few minutes to review some important information. For those unfamiliar with this particular webinar format, the presentation slides will appear on the right side of your screen. A chat feature on the left side of your screen will enable you to communicate with me should you have any questions or encounter any problems. Simply type your message and click send. You will also see an option for full screen on the left portion of your display. Clicking this will maximize the area where the presentation slides appear and will minimize your chat box so that it appears as a floating window. Please note that this webinar has been arranged so that during the presentation, the only voices you'll hear are those of the presenters. We have a lot of time after the presentation for Q and A session. At that time, we'll provide you with information about how to ask questions. Please note that this webinar is being recorded. A direct link to the webinar including audio and web content will be available on the NTAR Leadership Center Web site by 10 a.m. Eastern Time, Friday, June 19th. The NTAR Web site can be accessed at www.ntarcenter.org. That is W-W-W dot N-T-A-R-C-E-N-T-E-R dot O-R-G. Finally, after you exit the Internet portion of today's webinar, your web browser will automatically take you to a brief survey where you can give us feedback about your experience, as well as provide suggestions for future webinar topics. Please take a few minutes to complete that survey. And at this point, I'd like to turn things over to Nanette Relave, who is the Director of the Center for Workers with Disabilities at the American Public Human Services

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Association. Additionally, Nanette is the director of the NTAR Leadership Center, State Peer Leaders Network. Nanette? [Nanette Relave] Hi, thank you so much Robb. I want to welcome everyone to our webinar today on Going Green. I'm delighted that we have two presenters joining us, Jennifer Cleary who is Senior Project Manager at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University and co-author of Preparing the Workforce for a “Green Jobs” Economy. And we're also going to be hearing from Adrienne Parkmond, who is vice president of operations at The WorkPlace Inc. The WorkPlace is based in Bridgeford, Connecticut and at Southwestern Connecticut's Regional Workforce Development Board. And, Robb, if we can move to the next slide, number four. And as Robb just mentioned, materials from this webinar will be available on the NTAR Leadership Center's Web site and the weblink is also here in the presentation material for you. If we can move to slide five. I just want to take a brief couple of moments to talk about our center, The NTAR Leadership Center was established in September 2007 for a grant from the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor. And at the NTAR Center, we are a collaboration of partners with expertise across a variety of fields including workforce and economic development, disability employment, asset development, leadership development, and might I also add, health policy and Medicaid as well. And we were created for the purpose of helping develop capacity and leadership at the federal, state, and local level to enable change across systems that will increase employment and opportunities for economic independence for adults with disabilities. If we can move to slide number six. Our work is really guided by a set of principles that come from research from the Office of Disability Employment Policy and Research and knowledge building from the field and this includes increasing partnerships and collaboration among a variety of systems, increasing the use of self direction and services, as well as strategies like blending

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and braiding of funding, increasing economic self-sufficiency again for a variety of strategies such as asset building and financial litigation, increasing the use of universal design both in policy and programming, as well as in infrastructure, and increasing the use of customized and other flexible forms of work, to again improve opportunities for employment of people with disabilities and others who experience barriers to employment. And really the purpose of our webinar today is to spend some time with you to explore the emerging field of green jobs. Really, in order to help all of us better understand labor market, employment, and training needs in this relatively new field, so that we'll be in a better position to think about how job seekers with disabilities can find opportunities in the growing arena of green jobs and renewable energy and the occupations that are related to that. And also, of course as employment and training agencies, I'm sure that we probably have listeners who are also interested in some of the new funding opportunities available in the green jobs field through the Recovery Act as well as in budget proposals for fiscal year 2010. So hopefully this webinar can also give you some ideas for thinking about potential new funding, employment, and training opportunities and partnerships as well. So with that, if we can move along to slide number seven, and I am going to turn it over to Jennifer to begin our presentation. [Jennifer Cleary] Hello everyone, this is Jennifer Cleary, I'm the Project Manager of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about green jobs and I figure we'd start off first by talking about what are green jobs and what drives their growth. One thing to really keep in mind throughout this webinar is that green jobs, in general, are not new jobs. They are traditional jobs ranging from construction workers and others related to the construction field, to accountants, engineers, computer analysts, clerks, factory workers, truck drivers, mechanics. You know, traditional occupations in the economy that often, but not always, require a green layer of skills. And if we move on to

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the next slide. So, unfortunately, there is really no standard definition of green jobs at this point, generally kind of in their broadest sense, green jobs can be thought of as jobs that involve protecting ecosystems and wildlife, minimizing waste and pollution, or reducing energy usage and carbon emissions. Now we're going to focus on that third definition mainly because as we'll talk more about later, public policy is really right now the main driver of growth for green jobs. And so most of the federal investment, as well as a lot of the state investment that's being made is in the end area of energy and it's involved with reducing energy usage and then lowering carbon emissions. So anyway, as you can see on here we've listed just a few green jobs examples. We've seen the energy sector, but it's important to keep in mind that even within energy, these jobs are traditional jobs and many of them, especially in the short term, are going to involve middle skill, construction-related positions. Okay. In the energy industry there are really two broad industry areas you need to think about with regard to green jobs. That's renewable or clean energy areas, of course solar, offshore wind, biomass, geothermal, and then also in some of the cleantech sectors like nuclear and co-generation which involved natural gas and coal generation. And then, the other important sector involves energy efficiency or conservation. And this involves the building retrofits and weatherization of residential homes, as well as green construction and the manufacture and development of energy efficiency products, as well as the concept of energy use management. So we have a lot of corporations, et cetera, and this is where you actually have a few new jobs developing, although they're not very numerous. A lot of corporations are hiring an individual or set of individuals to really oversee their corporation's energy usage and to set policies to reduce energy usage or carbon emission. But most of the jobs again are involving either the manufacturer of renewable energy technologies or energy efficiency technologies and the R&D and the manufacturer of those products. And then kind of the largest number of jobs and the jobs that a lot of people are

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talking about in this field are the jobs involved with the construction of new facilities, the building weatherizaton and the actual installation of these products, and then the maintenance and operation of these products. So overall, as you can see on this chart, the most estimates basically say that the energy efficiency sector is really the largest provider of jobs currently. This is a report from the American Solar Energy society back in 2007, and you will know that because there is no standard definition of what a green job really is. You will notice that there are a number of reports out there that estimate the number of green jobs and their numbers are going to vary quite significantly, though most of them seem to agree that most of these jobs are in the energy efficiency sector. And so it's kind of similar to that pyramid we had up before where renewable energy is really that tip of the pyramid. And as we go forward with a lot of these public policy investments being made, that proportion is only going to change somewhat. The renewable energy industry is going to grow because we are essentially starting from zero. Really just 2.4 percent of the nation's energy now comes from renewable sources and between the federal investments and many, many states making aggressive energy policies that promote the use of renewable energy and they're setting higher goals for the use of renewable energy sources. We have a lot of room to grow in that area. But because there are also quite a number of investments in energy efficiency, and this is really the easiest way to conserve energy and to reduce our energy usage, that energy efficiency sector field is going to be the largest piece of the pie here. Okay, so just to ground this a little bit, I just want to talk about a few examples of particular types of jobs within energy efficiency in different renewable areas. Energy efficiency, we are talking about residential weatherization which most experts agree are really going to be the first set of jobs, kind of the first wave of green jobs to hit hard, are going to be in residential weatherization, mainly because these jobs are fairly easy to get off the ground in comparison to implementing larger, more complex commercial projects which involve a

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longer contracting period and often involve union labor. So, energy efficiency residential weatherization jobs, you've got energy auditors, which I don't actually have on here and energy raters, those are the folks who come in and they would do the assessment and figure out how the home is wasting energy and how that can be improved. Then you also have all these installation-related occupations, the electricians, heating and air conditioning specialists, carpenters, roofers, installation workers, et cetera, who actually do the work to make that house more energy efficient. And in many cases, a lot of those jobs really will not have much of a change in their skill set. Insulators, you know, when you talk to folks in the insulators union and they'll say, well, we've been a green job for the last 150 years. So they are basically just called in to do the work and their skill set won't necessarily change much. It's the energy auditors and those folks, you know, who need to have a combination of those soft skills to work directly with customers, as well as a broad understanding of building systems and also a broad understanding of the various energy efficiency and renewable energy products that can be used to improve the energy usage in a home or a building. Now, when you move into the commercial work, generally, the skill requirements with these jobs are a little bit higher and again they often involve unionized labor. You get into these building weatherization occupations, you have some higher level engineering occupations to plan out some of the work, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, energy engineers, energy management analyst, et cetera. And, this is also a similar set for a green building when we would be doing green building from scratch. Now when you look at renewable energy, I'm just going to focus for the sake of time on wind energy. You would have folks like environmental and energy engineers and then heavy construction workers, iron and steel workers, sheet metal workers, machinists, millwrights, and that's actually in constructing and putting up the windmill. On the manufacturing side, of course you have all the, that that also gets into the iron and steel workers and others who would work

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the equipment in a manufacturing facility to produce the components. And then of course as I mentioned earlier on the R&D side, for all of these products you’ve got scientists and engineers who developed the technology. So what skills and competencies are green energy employers generally speaking? Essentially because these are often traditional occupations and focused a little bit on energy efficiency, these are construction-related positions. The most important competencies are going to be those basic academic and workplace readiness skills. And then the traditional job specific skills that go along with being an electrician or a carpenter or others who were involved in the installation. And for some of those jobs, especially like I mentioned earlier, energy auditors, raters, some of those folks, they will need often some of that green layer, these green job specific skills, knowledge, and in some cases, specific credentials. And you need to, as you go forward with this, keep an eye on and talk with employers and talk with policy focused on your state to get a sense of how the standards for this type of work are developing because those standards often affect the type of credentials that employers will require. In some states, your regulatory agencies and state level bodies that are setting standards and saying for example that projects need to be done to a LEED standard or that the contractors need to be certified by the Building Performance Institute. And that has implications for the types of credentials that the workers for those contractors are going to need. And in some cases, if the standards are not set at the state level, they're being set by the employers themselves. So, the best source to really understand which standards are being put in place and which credentials are needed, are to talk with employers. And they are often, these nationally recognized credential both in the renewable side and the energy efficiency side that are often adopted, again, either at the state level, so all employers must hire folks with this credential or by particular employers if there is no state standard set. So, let me see. And what I will talk about a little bit more going forward is there are a set of emerging kind of long-term skills

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that are increasingly being valued by employers across a range of occupations. But I'll get into that in a few minutes. So, let's take a look now at what drives the growth of green jobs and where different types of jobs are likely to be located across the country. So, the three primary drivers of green job growth are technology, the economy, and energy policy. So, in terms of technology, you're generally talking about advances in the energy efficiency renewable energy technologies that make those technologies A, more effective and B, cheaper. And because as the technology becomes cheaper, that will encourage more homeowners and businesses to invest in those technologies. Right now, they are often very expensive which is why you need public policy to subsidize some of these investments to make it more attractive for homeowners and businesses to make those investments. Now, in terms of the economy, you have of course the price of traditional energy sources. This is a very important factor to consider, and also the general state of the economy because both of these are going to affect people's investment decisions. When it comes to the high price of traditional energy, we thought actually several years ago in 2006, 2007 when the energy prices were really rising and a lot of people were thinking this is going to be a permanent change. The economics of investing in this technology has changed. And we had a lot more businesses and contracts with, say, solar installation companies to install large scale solar projects and the economics were so good that a lot of these solar companies were actually footing the bill for the companies and then allowing the companies to pay them back over time with the savings that they were getting. But once those energy prices dropped again, those economics went away and these investments became a lot less attractive and you actually saw a downturn in the sort of existing green economy in a lot of states because of that. And then of course you have the general state of the economy, being in recession, both businesses and homeowners become a lot more conservative. Homeowners of course are afraid of whether they'll be able to retain their jobs and so that may make them

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less willing to make the investment in say putting a geothermal system in their home or solar panels or even making the energy efficiency upgrade, putting in more energy efficient windows, doing insulation, et cetera. So here is where energy policy comes into play, and public policy in general, because right now, public policy is the main driver of the green jobs economy. It's really providing the incentives to encourage private investments in this technology, because those other two factors are not sort of working well enough on their own. So in energy efficiency, it's a little bit more of a sure bet that these jobs will develop and that there will be quite a number of them. Because, especially when it comes to low-income weatherization projects between state and federal investments, a lot of those, both the auditing and the installation of the products is going to be fully covered or almost fully covered by the state or the federal government or some combination of the two. So the actual homeowner does not need to lay out any money. In the case of renewable energies, most of the policies involve incentives, tax incentives, et cetera, that make it more attractive for homeowners and businesses to make those investments. But it's a little bit more of a wait and see game on that because no one is really sure how well the market is going to absorb this. It makes it more attractive but because both homeowners and businesses still need to make some initial capital investment, you know, it's a little less certain exactly how many jobs will be created there and how fast those industries will grow. Now, on the renewable side though you also have with the Federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, there are also grants going to states that allow them to start large scale projects in renewable energy, putting in off-shore wind farms or large scale solar farms, et cetera. Those are a little bit easier to track because those projects are generally going to be funded through the federal and state investments and will depend less on individuals and companies making an investment decision. But on the other hand on the projects, we're going to take a longer time to develop in those jobs. They're not likely to show up for

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the next at least three to five years and maybe even longer. So, let's take a look at some of the state level demand drivers in renewable energy. When it comes to energy efficiency, the demand is likely to be pretty uniform across the U.S. It's going to vary a bit depending on whether the states themselves are also making investments, states and cities are also making investment on top of the federal investments and weatherizations. But it's a little bit more uniform. When it comes to renewable energy, there are several other things that drive the types of renewable energy that are likely to be more prevalent in one area versus another, things like natural resources, infrastructure, the workforce strengths, and the state policies. And you can see DSIRE, USA has a database of all the various state incentives. That's a good place for you to start to begin to understand what your particular state may be doing to try to incentivize growth in particular areas of renewable energy, whether it be solar or biomass, geothermal, et cetera. In here, this map here is a wind map so you can see that based on just some naturally occurring phenomena, it makes sense to do wind investments in some areas more than in others and the same thing goes for solar, as we see on the next page. Some areas simply get more sun than others. But this is kind of where public policy comes in and you see New Jersey over here on the right. We are not nearly as strong as places like Arizona and New Mexico in terms of the amount of sun that we get. But we have very strong public policies supporting solar installation. And we also have interesting infrastructure, we have flat roofs on a lot of our warehouses, which provide a good space to install a solar panel. So it's sort of a mix of the various forces that will determine which types of renewable energies are dominant through a particular state. So this is a little picture of some of our flat roofs and how we managed to take advantage of that. A quick overview of some of the investments coming out of the federal government that are spurring green jobs, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and that's $500 million in competitive grants for training in renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors. Many of you

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were probably keeping an eye on that. To my knowledge, there has been no release of an RFP yet, but some guidance has been released by U.S. DOL. There is a very large, $36.5 billion being invested by the federal government in energy efficiency, and almost $8 billion in renewable energy. And then we have $11 billion to transform the electric grid system. Now that's an important figure to keep in mind, because while everybody is very focused on green jobs, the federal government is also investing significant amounts of money in traditional energy jobs. So, making some of those transformations to the electric grid will not necessarily be considered a green job but they're somewhat closely related to construction jobs. And the federal government is also making a lot of investments in other types of infrastructure, in bridges and roads, et cetera. So essentially a lot of these investments, whether green or not are going to be a big boon in construction-related sectors, as well as someone in manufacturing that supplies the construction industries. So, what can the nation's workforce and education system do to prepare workers for this coming increase in green jobs? One of the pieces of advice I can give you is to use federal and state public policy as a roadmap in planning your efforts. Understand where the money is flowing, since we know that this right now is the largest driver of green job growth. Begin to build partnerships with employers and labor unions. Since labor unions are heavily involved in the construction industry and a lot of these jobs are construction related, it's important to start understanding where they're coming from and the extent to which they will be involved in job creation in your state. And also work very closely with employers to understand their actual real time hiring need. As well as, since you all are working with folks with disabilities, it will be good to get involved to their--probably other efforts going on in your state, to gather employers together to understand their hiring needs. It might be good for you all to get involved in that process and begin to pose questions about how employers and education and training institutions are considering the needs of people with

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disabilities as they develop these policies and develop their approaches. Develop or get involved in a green jobs workforce collaborative. It's important both to bring together employers in a state to understand how their hiring needs are developing, as well as to bring together all the various institutions from community colleges, to community-based organizations, to workforce organizations that are going to be involved in training folks for these jobs, and also labor unions. So that can be somewhat coordinated on a state level because nobody wants to create training programs that are not well connected to the job market. So, also be poised to succeed and to supply the number of quality trained green workers and that's going to be made possible by getting involved in this collaborative and making sure that you understand who's involved in education and training, as well as what the actual demand is from the employer that is developed. The next slide here, provides the right training at the right time. As we mentioned earlier, focus on foundational skills first. Link training to in demand "green" credentials from skills and you're going to get that from listening to employers and understanding what those credentials are. Build a long-term "green" skill knowledge over time. This is what I've mentioned earlier that there are a few knowledge areas that are becoming more important to employers. These are not necessarily required right now for many green jobs, but as the green economy becomes more established and people start thinking more holistically about how to achieve some of these energy and other environmental goals, more workers across a broad range of occupations are going to need to understand sustainability concepts, and need to think about things systemically, whether that be from the point of view of an energy auditor, understanding how all the different systems in a house or a building work together to impact the energy usage, or understanding on a broader level how various systems work together to impact the environment and energy usage. We also need to understand various green technologies, the standards, and the certifications around green jobs and in the various business processes that businesses are engaging in to

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make their products or their business processes greener. Life cycle analysis and return on investment is an important concept. Anyone interfacing with customers is going to need to explain to them why this investment is important and how it's going to save them money. And people who are also interested in life cycle analysis involve understanding how particular products impact the environment from cradle to grave. So when someone is thinking about putting in a bamboo floor in their home, or say putting in--keep an energy focus, putting in an energy efficient window, people may be concerned about, well how was that window created? What elements are going into that window and how did those elements impact the environment from the time that the raw materials were mined to the manufacturer of that product and then how is it going to impact the environment over time. So this type of interest will develop more as the green economy matures, and as people's thinking and knowledge matures about how the investment decisions they make are really impacting not just their energy usage, but the environment in a wider sense. There's also going to be more of a need for people to understand green financing mechanisms and carbon trading, et cetera. So, some of those financial instruments can get a little bit complicated and of course that's a little bit more important for sales-related focus and then also for accountants and other finance folks. Moving on. It's also important, as I mentioned before, to work either within an existing structure or to be part of spurring a coordinated flexible education infrastructure in your state. One that links together all of the different entities that are getting involved in green jobs training as well as has formal relationships with employers to understand how their hiring needs are developing. And some key elements to these coordinated structures can be asset mapping, understanding what training currently exists in your state. It's developing formal partnerships and a memorandum of understanding to link related agencies to ensure that workers get moved into jobs efficiently and get the training they need, building a feedback mechanism. And it can also allow you

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once you get a picture of the existing training versus the needs of employers, you can start to see the gaps and you can also start to build stackable credentials that really help workers to establish career ladders, and not just get training for one particular job, but get the training for that job and then be able to move easily into the next step, into another set of training that will help them move up the career ladder smoothly. And of course the said collaboration will also allow you to identify the various certifications that are required in your state and the accreditations for training programs that may be needed to offer those credentials. So develop or participate in local partnerships as well as state level or regional partnerships. Talk, listen, and work closely with employers. Labor unions are often a big part of the picture here. They provide a lot of training already and so it's important for community-based organizations and government organizations to work closely to understand their role. Develop career ladders and pathways for workers, and work with community-based organizations to help provide a social support layer. Here are just a couple of examples of the things that states or cities are doing around the green jobs area, whether it be training or financing mechanisms for training. Florida has a Solar Energy Research Center that combines R&D and incubator facilities with green jobs related training. And then Los Angeles has a great example of a talent network, kind of one of these coordinated flexible education infrastructures I was talking about earlier. They brought together a number of agencies, government agencies, employers, and educational institutions to really build a coordinated approach to educating folks and moving them into green jobs in the Los Angeles area. Massachusetts has developed a few innovative ways to generate funding for green jobs training in the states. And New Jersey has made some state investments through their energy master plan to spur job growth in energy efficiency, also in renewable energy. And the Department of Labor has also put out a grant that allows the Workforce Investment Board to better coordinate job development efforts in the area. Another good example of

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an innovative program is in Philadelphia, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has worked with the Energy Coordinating Agency which is a sort of a public-private entity that does a lot of the energy efficiency work already in the state. They've coordinated to purchase a job training center and so it's an actual physical facility that will train up to 200 people a year and since it has an employer involvement, that training is actually going to lead to a real job. Okay. That's really all that we had here. I just wanted to close by saying that from a disability perspective, I think it seems that what disability policymakers need to focus on is getting involved in the existing collaboratives that are going on in your state. And beginning to talk with employers and making sure that the education and training professionals and employers are considering the needs of people with a disability. Either in the ways that they are developing training or even in the ways that they are structuring jobs because it's possible that some types of jobs, maybe that require a broad range of skills could be compartmentalized, could be broken up to better accommodate people who have various disabilities to allow them to function well. Because of course a lot of these jobs and it concerns construction, it's very physical work. But in terms of the energy auditing, et cetera, it may be possible if you work closely with employers, perhaps to break up an energy auditing job so that you maybe had one person doing some of the physical inspection work and someone else who maybe has limitations on their physical abilities to do the customer interaction and the sort of sales type work involved in convincing the customers to make these investments and also doing the analytic aspect of understanding what needs to be done in a particular building or house. So, okay. Nanette, are you on the line? [Nanette Relave] Yes, I am, thank you so much, Jennifer. That was a very informative and a lot of knowledge to get us thinking. And with this I would like to turn it over to Adrienne Parkmond, again who is from The WorkPlace Incorporated in

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Connecticut and she is really going to give us a perspective on how a workforce investment board is approaching green jobs. And, Adrienne, all that you need to do is press star 7 and you will be unmuted and able to begin your presentation. [Adrienne Parkmond] Okay, good. Good afternoon everyone, my name is Adrienne Parkmond, and I am Vice President of Operations for The WorkPlace Incorporated, as noted earlier located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Next slide. The WorkPlace is the workforce investment board for Southwestern Connecticut. We are one of five workforce investment boards in the state of Connecticut and as you can see from the presentation on the map, we serve a 20-town region that's in the southwestern part. So we run from a little close to central Connecticut all the way down to what many used to call, I guess the Gold Coast, but with the financial crisis, we might be, you know, down to maybe [inaudible] at this point but we're on our way back up. What do we do? We help prepare people for careers. We strengthen the workforce and we help to build a healthy economy. And we do that in many ways. The primary way that workforce investment boards do that is through coordinating jobs, training and education primarily through our One-Stop Career Center. In Connecticut, we call those centers Connecticut Work Centers and we work in close partnership with the Connecticut Department of Labor and their staff in providing the operation and the direct service of these centers. We are currently operating three centers in our 20-town region. We have a comprehensive site located in Bridgeport, which is the largest city in the state of Connecticut and we have two other sites, one up in the valley area and one down in Stanford. We also operate youth programs through our workforce investment funding stream. And just a note on our youth programs this year, through the stimulus dollars, we did receive some supplemental youth dollars to provide opportunities for youth ages 14-24 to have a summer youth employment opportunity, which we haven't had in a very long time. I think the last time we really had a full summer youth program was

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under the Job Training Partnership Act. With that, we have about a hundred kids with disabilities that we have done eligibility for and are ready to place them in work sites this summer. So with the help of our vocational rehab agency here in Connecticut who has been tremendous in the respect that they are going to be providing job coaches and working with us to get work sites for these kids. So we're very thrilled that we have over a hundred kids with disabilities that will have a summer youth employment opportunity. We also look at as a way of trying to manage funding to maximize job training and support business and economic development and of course be an advocate for workforce development. So there's a lot of things that we do at the WorkPlace that may be a little bit beyond the traditional way because we think of ourselves as not only a workforce investment board but we are a 501(c)(3) so we operate in a broader perspective to provide job training programs that prepare individuals for higher growth opportunities in our region and also to help our business community make sure that they have a workforce they need. Next slide. So some of the programs that we have currently operating right now to serve individuals with disabilities, we are a part of Rutgers University, the Heldrich Center, State Leaders Innovation Institute, along with MERLA in Minnesota. And we are part of this with a goal of helping increase the employment opportunities of people with disabilities. So we have done a lot of work with the Heldrich Center as well as our other partners in trying to create ways on a statewide level to make sure that all of our partner state agencies that serve people with disabilities are coming around the table to make sure that we can work to the best of our ability here in Connecticut to create a seamless system for individuals in our state. We have a Homeless Veterans' Reintegration Program which is funded at the US DOL, the Veteran's Administration. We are in our sixth year of this grant and it serves disabled and homeless veterans that are referred from the Veteran's Administration in Connecticut that are a part of a homeless transition organization here in Bridgeport. This program has been extremely successful. We

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provide intensive case management for these mostly for the men's shelter. So for these men we provide life skills, we provide job training like leveraging our workforce investment, dollars that we use for training individuals that are coming to our One-Stop. We provide dollars for these individuals to receive some occupational skills training and we connect them to substance and mental health support services to help them to get back to work and to of course, you know, no longer be in the state of homelessness. The placement rate in this program has been about 85 percent and the retention in this is about 80 percent so it's been very, very successful in helping to transition these homeless veterans into employment. We have a Projects with Industry grant and this is funded out of the Federal Department of Education and it's working with individuals with significant disabilities to help them transition into employment as well. Everyone works in the project. We've had--this is actually a Workforce Incentive Grant (WIG) that funds this. We were probably one of the first workforce incentive grant grantees back in 2004. We were what they called a workforce incentive grant grantee or a WIG. So we were under the WIG 1 grant in 2004 and what we did with that funding is we made our One-Stop physically accessible to people with disabilities. In Bridgeport, we created a section of our One-Stop that is a disability resource center with all the adaptive technology that we could possibly have in a One-Stop to help individuals with disabilities who need to access our One-Stop services. So we call that our "everyone work center" within our Connecticut work operation. We've had this again in 2004. We received another WIG grant in 2006 and that helped to support the staff so we've had a disability program navigator on staff since then. And the state of Connecticut was a grantee of a statewide disability program navigator last year and what they did was they gave each with a staff person to put in the One-Stop to serve as a disability program navigator. So we were very fortunate that we were able to have two because we already funded one and that's been a great program and we continued that through the use of our regular workforce

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investment dollars because we know how important it is. Connect-ability, state of Connecticut is a Medicaid infrastructure grantee and through that they put an RFP per region to look at employment services. We actually applied under the youth portion where we are helping to transition youth for either into postsecondary education and either youth with disabilities into postsecondary education or employment. So the Connect-ability grant is up and running and that is going very well. Under our Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant, we are a WIRED grantee, one of 39 out of U.S. Department of Labor. We are working with partners in Westchester County, New York under our WIRED grant and we are very fortunate to get a WIRED disability research grant where we are just about complete. We have hired two community colleges, one here in Southwestern Connecticut, Norwalk Community College, and in Westchester, Westchester Community College to do an asset map, so to speak, of disability services in our region to look at the demographics of the individuals with disabilities in our region starting from the young age, school age children all the way through adulthood. So the information coming out of that, in that report should be completed within the next week or so. It's absolutely fascinating and it will help us to better provide services and training for individual with disabilities in our region. So I'm very excited about that. We also are working with Trust for the Americas which is part of the Organization of American States that's in Washington DC in helping them to implement a grant funded program out of the U.S. Department of Labor. They have to help provide employment services to individuals with disabilities in Costa Rica. So as you can see we're doing a lot in terms of working with people and serving people with disabilities not only here in Connecticut but all the way into Costa Rica so we're very busy but, well, again, fostering our mission. Next slide. Weatherization, I'm sure everyone is aware, under the economic stimulus there's been a lot of money put into weatherization. It's something that our community action agencies in Connecticut have been doing for a very long time

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and doing it quite well. And now, there have been an influx of about $60 million into the state up from about $3 million under regular funding that's a part of the stimulus. We have started to work with some of our nonprofit organizations in our region to develop some training. And this is not necessarily a part of the stimulus, this is a part of some of our programs that we just want to operate. We want to begin classes of training individuals and bringing technology and weatherization so we started a class working with The Green Team, which is a nonprofit community enterprise in Bridgeport, and they are affiliated with our community action agency who provide some weatherization training. We started this about a month ago, a month and half, a couple of months ago. And we want a small class to start because one of the things that we have had a lot of feedback on in terms of weatherization in any type of green [inaudible] piece is probably the most effective way to make sure people have skills in this trade. It's great I think as one of our union carpenters says to show someone a hammer, but if they don't get a chance to actually nail that hammer and use it, then when they get out on a job, there becomes a problem. So we started off with a very small class and it's been quite successful. We worked with most people with some type of barrier, so we provide life skills and job readiness and case management for individuals to make sure that they have a wraparound services to not only get to the program but to get employed and to stay in the job. Some of those core competencies that will come out of the weatherization programs, blueprint reading to be able to know the layout of a home and what needs to happen, math and measuring, of course safety, window and door replacement, household systems and insulation. Again as I talked about the "hands-on" component and site visits to homes for installation and energy audits have been very, very effective in helping people to understand a whole range of things that need to be done when you're going in to weatherize a home. Next slide. The cycle was completed in May. We had 12 participants in the class, 5 were disabled vets and out of those 5 disabled vets, 2 have already been placed

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as weatherization technicians that are going to be working in actually weatherizing the home. We had a mixed bag in terms of the other 7 participants. We had some individuals that come with some other programs. And one of the programs that they came through actually was our Mortgage Crisis Job Training Program that's serving individuals who were impacted by the subprime issue and are now out of work and facing foreclosure and they're looking to kind of retool and retrain themselves. So we had some of those individuals in the class as well who had been successful in finding employment as well. Connecticut's job funded program. Connecticut started a job funded program in Hart Brook, Connecticut probably back in 1996, so it's been a long time and we kind of model ourselves down here in Bridgeport after the Hart Brook model 'cause it's been around for, like I said a long time, and it's been very successful in helping individuals with barriers move into apprenticeship and into the construction industry. Our Jobs Funnel project, and let me just give you a quick rundown of what a jobs funnel is. It is actually, if you take a funnel and you flip it over, you kind of look at how you can flow people through the process, and again, this focus on individuals with some type of barriers. So we start by bringing people into the process, all of the goal of course, of construction employment and look at how we can help individuals, one, get basic skills. So we're doing assessments and we look at whether they need some math remediation or any type of other educational remediation and the GED, we provide access so they can do that. And then we move them to the next level once they get through that and that is other life skill types of training that we do, and all with the goal of moving from smaller groups 'cause as you, of course move through a funnel it's going to get smaller and smaller. We move those individuals into pre-apprenticeship types of training. And it's been very, very successful in Connecticut and it's something that we're all building on and we have four funnels up in our five web regions, so we're hoping that we can get, you know, a bit one up in Eastern Connecticut very soon because it's been very, very successful. And I think the biggest

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thing that has made us successful is the partnerships with the union that have been integral in helping to move these individuals into employment. And we here in Bridgeport had a job funnel task force and this task force that we convened included union individuals from the building trade of union, local government, we have foundations on the board as well as community organizations and education institutions as well, all with the goal of moving people into different employment. We started our job funnel program back in February, basically getting people ready for our shovel-ready projects that are coming down to the stimulus program. We looked at what's going on in Bridgeport so everything that we are preparing people for is based on data, based on a Green Jobs report that we conducted that I'll talk about in a minute when I talk about the bluegreen Institute. Again, focused on construction industries and some of the components of it is STRIVE and I'm not sure how many people are familiar with STRIVE, but it's a national program that is three weeks of just basically life skills boot camp where it teaches individuals all the work readiness and job readiness skills that they need. We've put the carpenter, the union who actually provided the training or the carpentry training, helping to get individuals familiar with those skills. We provided asbestos, lead abatement, and HAZWOPER trainings so that individuals could get their OSHA 10 cards and be familiar with all other kinds of remediation training to get ready to move into the construction industry. So we're very excited about the individuals that have come out of it, these programs, and we're very excited that we've just been notified that we were awarded a YouthBuild grant recently at the U.S. Department of Labor, so that will kind of build upon our job funnel and work with the youth up to the age of 24 which is hopefully that we can probably move in some individuals with disabilities as well. We're very excited about that. Next slide. In our Jobs Funnel program, again which I said it started off in February, we had about 60 participants. Five percent of them noted that there was some type of disability upon enrollment. We've had an 85 percent completion rate and we're working

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our job placement with these individuals and one of the things that we know that is always a challenge but becoming more of a challenge especially in the economic times is the need for supportive services. So we are using our workforce investment dollars, we are leveraging them to help provide some supportive services and again, provide those wraparound things that individuals need to make sure that they can get a job and keep a job and again, build a career. Next slide. We talked a little bit earlier about competitive funding, what's out there. And we are getting ready to put our region and also our state in a position to be able to apply for this grant. There has been guidance that has come out of the U.S. Department of Labor regarding the green competitive branch that are coming out shortly, probably in the next few weeks, I think that's the guidance set in--some time in June. So we are in the process of putting together some meetings around our region to get feedback and to make sure that we have all the people at the table that need to be at the table. We are looking at developing an asset map, so we know what resources are in our community in terms of education and supportive services. We don't want to duplicate, we don't want to, you know, have people doing things that others are doing. So we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to put their resources on a table and we can figure out how to maximize those--provide the most opportunities for those in our regions. We're going to be holding regional stakeholder meetings again to develop some of this information and to make sure we have a comprehensive plan so that we're ready when the grant comes out. We have retained what we, in the state call a Green Jobs Czar. And we're calling him a Green Jobs Czar and this is Bill Leahy who's the director of the Institute of Sustainable Energy out of Eastern Connecticut State University who has become our local guru here that's helping us in terms of again, that definition of the green job, how can we make sure that everyone including individuals with disabilities can take part in the training and also take part in this new economy. So we are kind of preparing our region and ourselves to make sure that

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we are grant ready so to speak. Next slide. Our bluegreen Institute. As a workplace that I've mentioned earlier, we consider ourselves more than just a workforce investment board. We kind of create opportunities for ourselves to make sure that we are helping not only the customers in our region but helping other entities kind of build their capacity as well. We have a fee-for-service division of the WorkPlace, it was called the Center for Capacity Development and we have rolled that into the bluegreen Research Institute, and I guess it's our in-house research division and is a fee-for-service division. We, under the bluegreen Research Institute, we have done Green jobs analysis for New York and Connecticut. We have secured over $20 million in competitive funding for other entities. We write grants for other entities not only in Connecticut, but across the United States so that they can, you know, be in a situation where they can grant funding to their organization. And again, a lot of it is around helping to build their capacity. Again, we assist other organizations nationally to apply for grants and we help them to develop their programs as well. Next slide. So what are we doing next to get ready? We are looking to increase our number of vendors offering green training in our region whether it's through our educational institution, whether it's the nonprofit organization, well, proprietary schools, just so that individuals coming to our workforce investment system have an opportunity to participate and to actually receive green training. So when we give out what we call an Individual Training Account or ITA, the entity has to be on our eligible training provider list, so we have made a conscious effort to go out, to bring in more vendors to create more opportunities for individuals coming to our system. We are convening regional stakeholders for competitive grant opportunities and looking to create a regional education leaders consortium. And it kind of goes back into what Jen mentioned around making sure we have stackable credentials which I think is so important and articulation agreements between our education systems so that we can make sure the training is relevant to make sure that people can move from

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one institution to another and that people can get all of the education and training that they need. And our biggest thing is to educate our customers to help them to understand what is green, what are the opportunities out there and what they can do to put themselves in a better position to actually be ready for the jobs that are coming down in a new economy. So if anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me, my contact information is there and my e-mail as well as my phone number. Thank you very much. [Robb Sewell] Thanks, Adrienne, that's a great, really great presentation. At this point, what we are going to do is open things up to our audience and give you the opportunity to ask some questions of our presenters today. In order to do so, you really have two options, you can click the raise hand button in the lower left hand portion of your screen and then we'll call on participants and provide you with instructions on how to ask your question. Or if you prefer, what you can do is just submit your question by using the chat feature, again in the lower left portion of your screen. Simply just type your message and then click send. And while we're waiting for some of our folks to submit questions, we do have one that's already been submitted and that's for Adrienne. The question is, what types of funding sources support the jobs funnel? Do you braid together funding sources to support the participants? [Adrienne Parkmond] The answer is yes. The funding that we have right now is from the state of Connecticut. We have a grant out of their 21st century funding that comes actually out of the Connecticut Department of Labor and we are looking to get money from foundations and other supporters in our region. So, it is kind of braided funding right now to provide the opportunity under the job funnel. [Robb Sewell] Again to ask a question, all you need to do is click the raise hand button or just send your question to me via the chat feature.

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It usually takes folks, with the chat feature, it takes a couple of minutes usually for people to send in their questions but again actually, we have a question that just came in via the chat. How can experienced employees find the right type—in training in particular fields in green energy? Again, how can experienced employees find the right type of training in particular fields in green energy? [Adrienne Parkmond] This is Adrienne. I think that probably the best way is to, if you're an experienced employee with some experience in green is to--I mean for us it would be to come in to our One-Stops to talk with our case managers who are being briefed on what those job opportunities are. And as we increase the number of vendors offering training to make sure that individuals understand what the training is and how that training can lead to other job opportunities and employment in the green field. So again I would suggest contacting the workforce investment board or the One-Stop operator to look at what they're doing to help prepare individuals in the community and also how they're their resources through the economic stimulus and through their regular workforce investment allocation to make sure those opportunities are available. [Jennifer Cleary] This is Jennifer, I just wanted to add too that there are sources in the private sector. Again it's important to understand what the actual credential means if any are from employers directly, because depending on whether state standards are set or particular employers adopt standards, that may define the type of training that's really needed. And for example, a LEED-certified professional is becoming increasingly popular in the green building area and facilities management, in the weatherization area, BPI, the Building Performance Institute certifications and accreditations are important. And so I think you need to first find out what certification is required and then both BPI and LEED offer training, often for example in

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New Jersey, there's a local community college that's offering the BPI curriculum for building analyst. LEED often does a lot of their own seminars in the community but of course the One-Stops are great. First place to go is if you have an experienced construction professional who has been laid off and is looking for ways to get back into the industry with perhaps a green focus. [Nanette Relave] We do actually have a couple more questions. The first one is, how are you integrating customized employment into your green jobs activities? [Adrienne Parkmond] In terms of integrating customized employment into our green jobs activities, right now we are trying to build upon on that. We have in our job funnel, again we have 5 percent of individuals with disabilities and we had 5 individuals actually in the Homeless Veterans Program. So again we're trying to build more bridges so we can make the training acceptable to individuals with disability and working on individuals that have significant disabilities as well. [Robb Sewell] Another question is, how are you making sure that disability-focused organizations are at the table and part of the conversation? What type of outreach is being done to the disability community? [Adrienne Parkmond] Again this is Adrienne, we have here in Southwestern Connecticut a disability task force that we've had since 2004 and there's probably a good 40 members that include businesses, that include nonprofit organizations, community organizations, the vocational rehab organizations in Connecticut which we have two and a disability service organization. So we have them connected to our system and we have them connected for a very long time. So they are kept abreast of what's going on. Under our Project with Industry grant, we have a business advisory council that's made up of primarily businesses who are committed to hiring people with

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disabilities but also disability organizations that worked with us in terms of helping to connect the business community to the individuals with disabilities and making sure that they become more educated and what it means to hire an individual with disability and to help them to understand that focusing on their ability is the main thing that needs to happen. So we keep them connected and make them a part of our task forces and make sure that they are speaking and have a voice for people with disabilities in all the projects that we operate. [Robb Sewell] Great. Again, if you would like to submit a question, ask a question to our presenters, just press the raise hand button or send your questions to us via the chat feature. And actually we do have a person that's requesting to ask a question. John, all you need to do is press star 7 on your telephone keypad and you'll be unmated and be able to ask your question. John also sent in the--his colleague sent it in but via the chat feature as well and he asks, where do you see people with intellectual disabilities fitting into green jobs? What aspects of green jobs have been focused on for this group of people? [Jennifer Cleary] This is Jennifer. I came in just a little bit. I mean, it depends a bit on the type of disability and the level of disability. Many of the construction jobs that are involved, especially in the residential level require fairly strong basic skills and workplace readiness skills. But they don't require an advanced degree and so they're fairly accessible jobs. But on the other hand, many of them do, especially if you're talking about electricians, some of the more skilled laborers will involve fairly strong math skills, the ability to read blueprints, et cetera. So, someone, for example, who has a mild learning disability, may be able to move into some of these positions that don't require very high levels of a particular academic skill or--

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[Nanette Relave] We also have another question for Adrienne. How will you be planning to include youth with disabilities into your YouthBuild grant? [Adrienne Parkmond] That's a great question. We again, one of the thing I talked about in our summer youth program that we have, a hundred kids with disabilities that have been certified as Workforce Investment Act eligible that we're going to be placing into summer jobs. We have a staff here at the WorkPlace for our youth work staff that their primary job is to go out and recruit youth for our programs, the regular workforce investment program, in addition to our summer youth program. So we work with school systems, we work with the VocRehab agencies, with again, guidance counselors in schools and so, we have a good network out there that we are looking to tap into to make sure that these kids have the opportunity to participate in a YouthBuild project. [Robb Sewell] Another question for Adrienne. Given that many current union members are out of work due to the recession, what advice can WorkPlace give for forming accepted partnerships with the unions that allow new types of workers to become union members and gain access to jobs? [Adrienne Parkmond] Yes. We have that problem here as well where we have a number of union members that are on the bench so to speak that are waiting for employment. One of the things that we're working with the unions is to, as Jennifer talks about the BPI training, is to help send some of those union members down to that and then work with individuals who are trying to move into the construction or the building trade industry to kind of help them to get some of the entry level training that they actually provide for us. So we're kind of working both into that and hopefully as the shovel-ready project get off the ground and start to get moving in the state, we can start to move some of those individuals who are currently sitting on the bench and also have the opportunity for

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some of these new workers to be a part of that in terms of getting into some of the union jobs and also making some of these individuals available for some of the non-union jobs as well. [Robb Sewell] Again to ask your questions, just press the raise hand button or send your question to me via the chat feature. It doesn't look like we have any additional questions at this point. Actually we do have another one. This is for Jennifer. Are there any good documents or reports or Web sites that people can access that would provide some more background about green jobs and some promising practices and training? [Jennifer Cleary] Well, I do know there are a number of reports that are out there that try to estimate the number of the green jobs that are out there. The [inaudible] organization just came out with a new report that tries to estimate the number of green jobs that are in the states that's prior to some of the public policy investments. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst also put out a report and then there's one that we quote in our research brief from the American Solar Energy Society. To my knowledge I'm not very familiar at this point with any real comprehensive best practices report on some of the training approaches that are out there. I do know the Apollo Alliance and Green for All Web sites have some examples of some of what their member organizations are doing with the Ella Baker Center and they have some free apprenticeship programs going on out in Oakland and then I also know that on Workforce 31 actually tomorrow they are having a webinar on the Los Angeles sustainable infrastructure model which is a talent development network. It's actually one of the things that I have mentioned earlier that brings together a number of educational organizations, and thus could bring together a number of government, educational, and employer

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organizations to form a comprehensive strategy for training folks for green jobs and also establishes articulation agreements among educational institutions to allow for the development of career ladders and [inaudible] of that job funnel approach that Adrienne was talking about. So it sounds somewhat similar to the approach that WorkPlace is taking and in terms of bringing all the right people together in the room to both figure out what's already going on and then identify the gaps and then build on those in a coordinated fashion. [Nanette Relave] Thank you. This is Nanette. Robb, can you hear me? [Robb Sewell] Yes we can. [Nanette Relave] Okay great. Sorry I was on mute on a couple of different ways. I wanted to make sure I was unmuted. Again this is Nanette Relave with the Center for Workers with Disabilities and the NTAR Leadership Center and I want to thank both of our presenters Jen and Adrienne so much for your very wonderful and informative presentations. I hope that folks feel a little bit more armed now with knowledge about green jobs training and employment. The slide that's up right now provides some contact information for several of us at the NTAR Leadership Center and we encourage anyone listening to contact us if you have any questions about the center, and always encourage you as well to visit our Web site. Adrienne, I love your concept of being grant-ready. That's wonderful and that's something we've really been encouraging the states that we've worked with to think about how you can leverage to the partnership that you've been building, whether it's through your participation in the institute or the State Peer Leaders Network to both leverage existing resources, that you have been also to be better prepared to take advantage of new opportunities that are coming down the pipe. And I believe that in terms of the competitive range of--through the Recovery Act that there will be, I believe up to five solicitations that will be coming out.

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So there should be multiple opportunities I think to consider, but across all of them, it's very likely that partnerships across public and private sector entities as well as with the educational sector will be very important. So we really do encourage you to continue to perform and build off your partnership. We think that will give you a strong base, whether you're seeking new funding or again using your existing funding and also several of the questions brought up the issue of how can people with disabilities really become part of this pipeline and again I think it's through these partnerships that we also help to open up some of these pathways. So again I want to thank our presenters very much. We thank Robb for, as always, doing an excellent job in preparing our webinar and to thank all of our listeners as well for joining us and wish everyone a very good afternoon. So thank you again and goodbye.