Long Beach will begin recruiting young residents for its newly formed Youth Climate Corps, which will provide job training and job placement in areas of the economy that will address climate change in the coming decades.
The program is being funded with $6.3 million in state funding that was issued to cities to create youth workforce programs focused on climate issues, food insecurity and COVID-19 recovery. A total of $5 million is expected to support the wages of the workers while the remaining $1.3 million will go toward other support services and administration of the program.
The Long Beach program will be open to residents between the ages of 16 and 30, and will pay approximately 380 program participants between $16 and $27 an hour. The bulk of the fellowships offered through the program will last six months and pay a maximum of 450 hours, but 16 positions would last for two years.
Three-fourths of the program participants will be people who are low-income, unemployed, transitioning out of foster care or are engaged in mental health or substance abuse treatment or have been in the criminal justice system.
The goal of the program is to teach new skills through job placement with the hope of eventually transitioning participants into permanent jobs or continuing education.
Nick Schultz, executive director of Pacific Gateway Workforce Innovation Network, said partners include Pacific Gateway, city departments and area nonprofits. They will begin meeting in the next few weeks and job placements could start as soon as June.
Mayor Robert Garcia said that often times the issue of climate change is not accessible to lower-income communities and asked that a broad outreach program using the city’s schools, faith institutions and community organizations be used to spread the word of the new opportunity to get trained in climate-related jobs.
“I think this is going to be a transformational program for so many young people and I’m really proud that we’re going to get this launched soon,” Garcia said.
Participants could be placed into work programs that include tree planting, ecosystem restoration, urban farming and rooftop solar panel installation. They could also work as a city liaison to community members on climate initiatives or with the city’s Public Works department on projects involving watershed management or in the city’s health department, establishing health market pop-ups and promoting food-related resource programs.
They would be provided with the tools and industry training, and Schultz said that there could be a possibility that the program could count toward apprenticeship completion if participants want to continue on with a trade union.
In addition to learning new skills, participants in the Youth Climate Corps will be offered support services like child care, transportation and the required clothing and equipment to do the jobs they’re assigned.
Creating the Youth Climate Corps was initiated in November when the city started outreach on how it should spend the money it was awarded from the state. Environmental groups supported the creation of the program and the city sought to align it with the federal civilian climate corps in hopes of securing future funding to continue the program past 2024, when the current funding is required to be spent.
Long Beach to create Youth Climate Corps with $5 million in state funding