Sustainable Peralta

Oakland Green Jobs Corp students celebrate their graduation by raising their commemorative green hard hats. (photo courtesy Ella Baker Center)

200 hundred people, including Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Peralta Colleges Chancellor Elihu Harris, packed into Laney College’s Theatre at 4pm this afternoon to celebrate the graduation of the 1st class of the Oakland Green Jobs Corp, the first program of its kind in the world.

“You folks, all 35 of you, are the astronauts of the Green Jobs movement,” said Mayor Dellums to the graduates sitting next to him. “You have gone where no one else has gone, but where thousands of people will go. You folks on the cutting edge you are part of an elegant idea, fight poverty and fight pollution simultaneously.”

Laney College’s Career Technical Education programs provide classes in home energy efficiency, solar photovoltaic panel installation, electrical, carpentry, insulation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

The students received life- and job-skills training at the Cypress Mandela Training Center, based in West Oakland. Cypress Mandela also selected the first group of trainees from its on-going programs.

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Growth Sector is working with regional green businesses to place graduates into full-time jobs.

Designed to serve people with multiple barriers to employment (e.g., lack of job skills, lack of education, language/cultural barriers, or history in juvenile/criminal justice system), the Green Jobs Corp provides world-class job training to prepare young adults in Oakland for green-collar careers. 

Photo from Bay Area News Group of Mayor Ron Dellums, left, congratulating the students on being models for the region and for the country. (D. Ross Cameron)

“My hope for you is that this experience provides you with the capacity, the security, with the confidence, the joy that allows you to go forward and flourish in your lives,” said Mayor Dellums to the graduates.

Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris exhorted, “You have set the stage for those who will follow you… those who may be discouraged, those who may not believe that opportunities are real or that you can achieve fantastic results, you have demonstrated that things are possible. We can encourage so many in our community who are hopeless, frustrated and in a state of despair that ‘yes they can’ as well. We all have to get up, we gotta get it, we gotta do it, we have to demonstrate it to our children.”

Read more articles about this program and event:

• Oakland Green Jobs Program Graduates 1st Class, CBS5.com
  

  VIDEO

• Graduates Of Oakland’s Green Jobs Program Ready For Work, KTVU News and VIDEO
  

  Oakland Green Jobs Corps is a partnership between the city, Laney College, Growth Sector, Inc. and the Cypress Mandela Training Center which helps low-income or other disadvantaged people start stable careers.

• Oakland Green Job Corps grads get to work, SF Chronicle:
  

  More than 40 hammer-swinging, lumber-toting, drywall-nailing young people broke out the apple cider in Oakland on Monday to celebrate their graduation from one of the nation’s first green-collar job training programs.

  The graduates, who include low-income residents, ex-convicts and people who tested below an eighth-grade education level, are now headed for jobs as solar installers, energy auditors, carpenters and other entry-level posts in the booming green economy. Most of the jobs start at about $15 a hour, but graduates can expect to earn more as the industry matures.

• Oakland’s Green Jobs Corps graduates inaugural class, Oakland Tribune, SJ Mercury News, Contra Costa Times:
  

  Before the Green Job Corps, Luke Jaussaud was a blue-collar guy, while John Tafoya came from the white-collar world.

  After Monday, both are equipped to find green-collar jobs.

  Thirty-five men and women graduated from a nine-month job-training program Monday afternoon, marking the end of the inaugural class of the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, which attempts to lift people out of poverty, dead-end jobs or unemployment by giving them training to work in the fields of solar, green construction and energy efficiency.

• 1st class graduates from Oakland Green Jobs Corps, Green For All:
  

  The Oakland Green Jobs Corps – a pioneer in building pathways out of poverty through green-collar training – will graduate its first class today and send 40 graduates into the world equipped for jobs in green construction, solar installation and retrofitting.

  “This is a historic day for Oakland and the country as a whole,” said Ian Kim, director of the Ella Baker Center ’s Green-Collar Jobs Campaign.

• Green Jobs Corps in Oakland by Ian Kim, for Urban Habitat
  

  In the aftermath of the 2001 California energy crisis, several energy companies were sued for overcharging and contributing to the fake shortages. The companies eventually settled, and $4.5 million of that settlement is earmarked for the city of Oakland, to be spent over the next three years on renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Thanks to the Oakland Apollo Alliance and the Oakland Mayor’s Office of Sustainability—and pending formal approval in early 2007—$100,000 will be used to create the Oakland Green Jobs Corps.