Building Workforce Pipelines to Climate & Environmental Resilience Jobs through Service Years

Millions of jobs are being created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — but who is going to fill them? Building sustainable talent pipelines into green jobs is essential in order to arm the next generation with the skills they need to fill these jobs and ensure these federal investments are successful. To strengthen workforce development pathways into this growing sector, Service Year Alliance released a free Climate & Environmental Resilience Guide that shares new resources to develop, expand, and enhance service year programming (AmeriCorps, VISTA, etc.) and highlights the potential for partnerships in areas that present particular opportunities for growth, including energy efficiency, community capacity building, and rural resilience.

Service Year Alliance hosted a virtual webinar in June 2023 to provide a detailed overview of these new resources and dive deep into each of the three service year program models where opportunities for expansion are ripe. Attendees had an opportunity to join a breakout session on one of the following three models, based on what is best for their community: 

• Energy Efficiency - Learn how service year programming can be leveraged to help advance weatherization and energy efficiency goals at the state and local level. 

• Community Capacity Building - Learn how placing a small contingency of corps members in municipalities, nonprofits, institutions of higher education, school districts, tribal nations, or faith-based organizations can enhance the impact of climate and environmental resilience efforts. 
  
  
• Rural Resilience - Learn how service year programming can help rural communities become more resilient in the midst of climate change and develop the next generation of climate and environmental stewards in rural communities.

 

Watch the webinar recording: