JFFLabs Director Taj Eldridge in “A $25 million Plan to Upskill and Diversify the Climate Workforce”
July 27, 2022
At a Glance
With support from the Ares Charitable Foundation, the five-year CREST initiative will prepare individuals for climate-resilient jobs using evidence-based solutions.
To prepare a skilled workforce for jobs in climate change mitigation, the Ares Charitable Foundation partnered with Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the World Resources Institute to launch an initiative called Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (CREST).
A five-year program, CREST will prepare people for climate-resilient jobs in the United States and India.
CREST’s goal is to train at least 25,000 individuals and place them in clean energy jobs. In an article in Impact Alpha, JFFLabs Director Taj Eldridge said that, through its work in the CREST initiative, JFF aims to “fill gaps in climate-related skills and training with evidence-based solutions.”
In an article published by Impact Alpha, JFFLabs Director Taj Eldridge points to Los Angeles-based ChargerHelp!, which repairs electric vehicle charging stations and trains people to be EV charger repair technicians, as an example of a green technology company that has adopted a successful model for creating green jobs and training people from diverse backgrounds to fill those jobs. JFF’s impact investment fund, ETF@JFFLabs, is a ChargerHelp! investor.
As we’re moving forward and putting investment in climate-focused companies, do we have enough talent, that’s diverse as well, to work for these companies? We can’t solve the problems of climate in a silo.
Taj Eldridge, Director, JFFLabs
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