But the neighborhoods of the South Bronx have an edge: experienced community-based organizations devoted to an idea whose time may have come—green-collar jobs building a more energy-efficient, less polluting economy.

Green jobs have become a buzz word, embraced by the Obama administration as a way out of the economic downturn. It has provided $4 million to a union-backed education organization, which will parcel it out to local organizations.

In this special report, the Herald examines how much of that money will be spent, analyzing what it may mean for residents and for the Bronx and taking readers to the workplaces and classrooms that will share the $4 million to teach new skills. We visit:

• The Osborne Association, which helps people who’ve done time in jail or prison to become gainfully employed.

• Project H.I.R.E. at Bronx Community College, where trainees learn construction practices

• And an after-school program run by SoBRO, where young people get an early start at thinking green.

A version of this article appeared in the June issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Federal funds aim to build on grassroots training programs

Chances are you’ve heard it all before.

• New York’s 16th Congressional District, which includes Mott Haven, Melrose and Port Morris, is the poorest in the country.
• The Bronx has the highest unemployment rate in New York at 14.1%, and unemployment is worse still in the South Bronx.
• The area is home to New York City’s most polluting facilities and fume-filled streets, creating health problems for those who live and work there.

Now, a growing number of programs are seeking ways to help out-of-work Bronxites and those in low-pay, dead-end jobs find more gainful employment, while making the city more energy-efficient and ending wasteful throwaway practices that propel hundreds of air-polluting trucks through Mott Haven and Hunts Point to garbage trains and waste transfer stations.

A $4 million stimulus grant from the federal government to the Consortium for Worker Education aims to leverage the experience of locally-based organizations to train hundreds of residents for green-collar jobs in construction, horticulture, pollution control and energy-saving industries.

The consortium—the education arm of the AFL-CIO’s New York City Central Labor Council—chose to target the South Bronx for these jobs in the green economy: 90 percent of the workers who will receive training must be from the area.

“It’s kind of hard to overstate what an important piece this $4 million is,” said John McDermott, assistant to the chairman at  the consortium. “As far as training grounds go, that’s a lot of money, and it is indeed an investment in the workforce and the people of the South Bronx.”

But Omar Freilla, executive director of Green Worker Cooperatives, which will receive a share of that $4 million, says the money is welcome and the consortium is doing what it can with it, but it’s only a drop in the bucket for places like the South Bronx.

“The government has passed out over $1 trillion in bailout money, mostly to the finance sector,” said Freilla, whose organization combats environmental racism by establishing worker-owned, eco-friendly businesses. “Four million dollars isn’t going to create enough businesses or jobs to put the 20-plus percent of unemployed people in the South Bronx back to work.”

To its credit, the federal government has also upped its support of the Weatherization Assistance Program from $300 million to $5 billion. The funds pay pays for energy-efficient upgrades to low income housing throughout the country. Millions of those dollars will find their way to the Bronx through the state government and create a demand for workers with the skills to build and rebuild green.

Some of the people who will be pointing bricks and installing new windows and insulation will be graduates of the Bronx-based training programs.

But some won’t, says McDermott, who criticizes federal programs for failing to pay much attention to how the well the work gets done and how the people who do it are treated.

“It’s not an uncommon government approach to throw a whole bag load of money at the problem,” he said. “What happens is that money gets out in the street and it’s like the Wild West, with people using day laborers.”

The consortium’s goal is to educate, and eventually unionize, a permanent green workforce in the Bronx to handle the new demand for energy conservation and clean power and to create living-wage jobs in the process. The task, it says, would be impossible if the organizations that will share the $4 million were not already in place.

They have battled successfully against building new power plants and a proposed waste transport hub. They have made Melrose the first neighborhood in the state to win certification as environmentally advanced. They have built energy-efficient green roofs atop many buildings, including the flagship Borough Hall. According to Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., nearly a third of all the solar panels in the city are installed or being installed in the Bronx.

“The city and the nation can look to the Bronx to see its innovative approaches to adversity,” said Diaz in a written response to questions. “They are rooted in grassroots action, innovation, determination and vision.”

If everything goes according to plan, the Consortium for Worker Education believes the Bronx will become a hive of green industry.

It remains too early to tell. The grant money has not been paid out yet, and some of its beneficiaries are concerned about the lag. The green movement in the Bronx, though active, is still young, and some remain skeptical that these jobs will ever come.

Gene Adams, director of collaborative education at Bronx Community College, thinks the term “green jobs” is a little too fashionable and, therefore, superficial. “I’m a nitty gritty guy,” said Adams. “I like to get down to what we’re really talking about and, right now, I don’t think that has clearly been articulated for us.”

However, he continued, “I think there are people around, and I’ve met quite a few, who are doing a lot to foster that and to bring it forward and to really come up with a workable definition.”

“I personally hold that it always comes from people first. If there was no demand for it, the money wouldn’t come here,” said Freilla.

A version of this story appeared in the June issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Trainees at Bronx Community College.Photo by Carla Candia

College for construction crew teaches green building

A brand-new duplex apartment in the University Heights section of the Bronx is ready for inspection. Equipped with bamboo floors, a ceramic kitchen and a spacious bedroom closet that would make more than one New Yorker jealous, it would rent for at least $2,000.

Instead it will be demolished. And the construction workers who built the apartment won’t mind seeing it go.

Rogelio Perez, 23, and Josimar Paredes, 21, were on the crew that built the duplex. They started last November by tearing down the work of an earlier crew, while trying to preserve and reuse or recycle as much of the building material as they could.

This process of building and demolition is the way would-be construction workers learn their trade from Project H.I.R.E., a 20-week free training program that offers lessons in the most up-to-date ways to be environmentally sound.

The duplex is in a warehouse-sized classroom at Bronx Community College, where Project H.I.R.E. teaches low-income students 18- to 60-years-old plumbing, carpentry, electrical wiring, painting and tiling, among other skills necessary to find work in the construction industry.

The program is one of the recipients of the $4 million federal stimulus grant to Bronx non-profits that will be distributed by the Consortium for Worker Education.

The grant comes just in time. The program has been operating with funds from the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund to which the baseball team donated $800,000 to quiet opposition to constructing the new ballpark on public land. That money is almost gone.

Project H.I.R.E. program director Glenda Self hopes the new money, still tied up by federal red tape, will be available in time to start a new class in June.

Project H.I.R.E. is the only program of its kind in the city, according to Self. For the past 25 years, it has taught students to build by doing. They read blueprints, frame the walls, install the wires and pipes and sheetrock the walls and the ceiling. Getting the ceilings up is “the hardest thing to do,” said Perez.

The results of the students’ efforts are three real apartments. Each has doors, stairs, floors, ceilings, windows, kitchens, bathrooms, lights, running water and all the other things a tenant would need.

Two apartments are situated in one end of the room and the duplex in the other. In the middle, between the three units, desks, chairs and a blackboard hanging on a wall form a rough version of a classroom.

“For two weeks they made us watch videos about constructions and read books. After that we begin to pull the apartments down,” said Owen Philips, 22, who moved from Jamaica to New York to gain a better education.

The experience was tough but rewarding. “It was intense. Five months here, working every day,” said Perez who, like 90 percent of the students at Project H.I.R.E., lives in the Bronx.

“Everything is done by the teams; none of this was done by the teachers,” Self added.

Project H.I.R.E. teaches long-standing techniques for saving energy and resources. The students use energy efficient bulbs, for example, and install engineered flooring made of plywood topped with a thin layer of hardwood. “It keeps us from having to cut down so many trees,” explained Self.

The students also learn how to paint, a process that, according to Self, is not as easy as it looks. There’s even an environmentally correct way to choose colors.

“The way you use paint can either cause you to use more energy because it’s too dark in the room or it can help you to reduce your energy use because you used the right colors,” Self explained.

When they begin the course, most of the students have given little thought to the environmental impact of their work. But as the program goes on, teachers notice a change.

“They go home and they try these bulbs and they find out that they would pay less,” said the program head teacher Robert Edwards.

Philips said that he learned to work materials that are more environmentally friendly than what he used in his home country. “In Jamaica we used plastic to do the plumbing and here we use metal,” he said.

Perez, Paredes and Philips are looking for work. Project H.I.R.E. helps them by letting them know of job offers and preparing them for interviews. The students are anxious to find work. “The whole idea is to earn more money,” said Perez who used to work as a porter at the Mets Stadiums.

But money is not the only reward.

Amaris Rodriguez, 31, one of three women who graduated from the last class, just finished building her mother a kitchen. “Anyone would charge her around $10,000, and I did it for free,” she said.

Rodriguez used to work in real estate. She took the course to learn the basics about construction, because her goal is to become a developer, starting her own company. To accomplish that she feels she needs to have construction skills.

A couple of months ago she didn’t know a thing about building, now she is able to built a kitchen with her own hands. “I take it as a life changing experience,” Rodriguez said.

The Consortium for Worker Education will use the money to establish a Center for Environmental Workforce Training to teach both job skills and offer general education.

The organization will partner with several non-profit organizations, including Mott Haven-based SoBro and Greenworker Cooperatives to train residents to build or retrofit energy-efficient buildings.

Most of the participants will “learn how to work with their hands—being able to fix things,” said Rebecca Lurie, director of development at the consortium.

Jobs will include window installation and building repair, installing insulation and repairing or installing boilers, she said Some participants in the program will also learn to conduct energy audits and market energy upgrades to building owners,

Lurie said the consortium hoped to launch the program, which will last for two years, within a month.

Sustainable South Bronx and The Point CDCthe Osborne Association, the Association for Energy Affordability, the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. and Bronx Community College’s Project Hire will also serve as partners in the program, which was hailed by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. as “a big step toward becoming the ‘greenest’ borough in New York City.”

All told, the program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, aims to provide training and education services for 425 participants, while placing 297 of those who receive a degree or certificate in jobs.