There's a new face at Step Up Savannah, a collaborative of organizations, businesses, and government agencies in Savannah that seek to move families toward economic self sufficiency. Garrison Marr, the new Director of Workforce Development at Step Up Savannah, is working with community service providers to identify workforce development projects and to find the resources to implement those projects. I had the opportunity to interview Garrison Marr and learn more about his role in helping to green the workforce in Savannah.
LP: Who are you and what do you do?
GM: As the Director of Workforce Development, I help facilitate the organization and development of community job training service providers. Step Up Savannah (Step Up) is not intended to be a direct service provider, so the intent of my position is to bring new resources to these providers. We do this through a Workforce Action Team that engages area employers to identify needs in the local economy and identify best practices for service providers. One recent example of the types of outputs generated from this platform of capacity building is the network of service providers using the Center for Working Families model to bundle job training and supportive services.
LP: What role, if any, do you have in developing "green" workforce development opportunities in Savannah?
GM: The opportunity to provide "green" job training to the community - and specifically the low-income community - is what motivated me to pursue this position. I've been interested and active in promoting sustainability in Savannah since moving here in 2009 and having opportunities to chair the City's Sustainability Committee and helping with the Chatham Environmental Forum's ongoing projects. This position seemed like an opportunity to take that energy and translate it into projects that were good for the environment, the local economy and the community. That's hard to beat! The Workforce Development Director position is partially funded by a portion of the Chatham County's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program, and there's a directive to create twenty "green" job opportunities a year over the next four years. In my role as the Director of Workforce Development at Step Up, I'll be working with community service providers to identify opportunities and bring in the resources to implement those projects. Right now the twenty "green" job opportunities per year is operating as a short term goal for me. I think it may be a low bar and that we can do better. I'd like us to do better every year.
LP: Do you believe developing "green" workforce development opportunities is a good strategy for Savannah?
GM: If you look at some of the job projections in the "green" sector - I like the U.S. Conference of Mayors recent report on Green Jobs in U.S. Metro Areas which projects 238% job growth by 2018 nationally - it's fairly evident that at the very least the sector is going to be important in the future. On a personal level, I think this is encouraging on a broader level than the economic impact as it reflects a large increase in the demand for "green" services. I think developing a "green" workforce in Savannah makes sense; a "green" workforce is also an innovative workforce and a creative workforce.
As the sector grows it will require constant adaptation by practitioners and the embracing of new technology. The ubiquity of "being green" right now also means that every other community in the country is eying the same possibilities. Green workforce development as a community strategy must also recognize that ~65% of the jobs will be in highly specialized fields in engineering, law, consulting and public administration; and a large proportion of these jobs are existing but will have green components added to them. So it's important to define who the workforce development strategy is good for. The local economy and community will benefit from lower energy bills, a cleaner of environment and new economic activity, but it may take a concerted effort to make sure that access to the economic opportunities are equitable.
Looking at the experiences of "green" job training programs from across the national scene, it's fairly clear to me that "green" job training by itself hasn't been consistently producing immediate opportunities for low-income individuals to increase their incomes. Meaningful job training programs will need to be more holistic and include paid work on needed community projects or provide other means of monetizing the training in the short term. We know that "green" job training is a smart move in the long term, but if all we're doing is moving people through training programs, we also have to acknowledge that we may not be making participant's lives better right now. I think this is an exciting challenge though because it necessitates more layers of local benefits from the training.
For more information regarding Step Up Savannah and the work of Garrison Marr, email gmarr@stepupsavannah.org or visit http://stepupsavannah.org online.
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