The Workforce & Volunteer Department at GRID Alternatives Inland Empire was excited to bring on our second Solar Construction Cohort in partnership with Riverside County Workforce Connection and College of the Desert (COD). We were 50% into our 12-week training when we were struck with the California stay-at-home orders and made the difficult decision to halt our paid training portion of our program. However, through collaboration with COD, GRID, and the county, we were able to continue our classroom portion of training virtually through zoom and mailed out packets of classroom materials to our trainees. During our last class session, we had two employers, Hot Purple Energy and Optimum Solar Power Inc., visit our trainees to share about opportunities to work with their companies. In addition — in partnership with Sunrun — we were able to place two of our recent graduates onto a paid training opportunity (80 paid project hours) to complete a SOMAH (Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing) build the following Tuesday after completing class. We'll be continuing to help connect our recent graduates to more local solar career opportunities in the Inland Empire.
We are grateful to leverage such quality partners in Riverside County's Workforce Connection program and COD to be able to offer this training program for another year and looking forward to offering this program again next year.
According to a recent report by Solar Industry Magazine, due to the COVID-19 pandemic it is forecasted that over 100,000 solar jobs will be impacted. We need your help! Please consider supporting GRID IE by making a donation for us to continue providing free solar job training and advance clean energy and the solar workforce.