Central Valley News

Ivan is a GRID client and passionate community advocate of our program who was instrumental in getting solar installed on 40 homes in his neighborhood with GRID. Currently, he is block co-captain along with his wife, a Hmong resident and a first generation Mexican in his community neighborhood of homes and a senior villa. He wants to make sure to be unified in his community. 

Meet Ugochukwu (Ugo)!

Ugo studied solar installation with our partner organization, Proteus Inc. After the first install with GRID Alternatives and listening to a presentation by a current staff member, he acquired a strong desire and admiration towards GRID and decided to volunteer. Within three months, he gained a Team Leader Certification and participated at Solarthon 2016, which he enjoyed very much. Ugo is now nearing his fifth year in the Construction Department and he considers himself very blessed to be employed by GRID Alternatives.

In 2018, Cristian Tello heard about GRID Alternatives from a radio announcement. Although he didn’t know anything about solar, he was interested in finding out more about a possible opportunity. His current job at a car wash wasn’t providing the prospect of upward advancement and solar just might be the thing that he was looking for in a career. With a little investigative work, he found that GRID Alternatives offered a variety of ways to gain skills in different aspects of the solar industry and Installation Basics Training (IBT) was one of them.