 Good afternoon, everyone. I hope everyone had a nice, long Labor Day weekend. Welcome to the second installment of our Workforce Wednesday briefing miniseries set for the month of September. I'm Dan Bressette, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Thanks for joining us today for a new spin on Conservation Corps. Last week, we kicked off September with preparing high schoolers for green careers. If you missed that briefing, or would like to learn more about the wide range of climate, clean energy, and environmental topics we cover, please take a moment to visit us online at www.esa.org. And the best way to stay up to date on briefings, including the rest of our Workforce Wednesday miniseries, please sign up for our bi-weekly Climate Change Solutions newsletter. We have a jam-packed four-person panel today, so I will keep my introduction very short. The idea of a Conservation Corps has been around for a while. Probably the most familiar example is the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was active in the 1930s and 40s, and served those unemployed in the wake of the Great Depression. And since then, youth Conservation Corps have continued that legacy. The new spin referenced in our title of our briefing today is what it's all about. Our four panelists are taking the Conservation Corps model to new heights and new places, and with new urgency to improve our environment and mitigate climate change. And more recently, with millions hit by historic unemployment caused by the coronavirus outbreak and facing an uncertain future, these programs are ever more valuable to those in need of work. For the people involved, the Corps itself, these organizations provide exciting, engaging, on-the-ground experience to equip them no matter where their careers and sustainability take them. It's a great topic for today, and there is still much more to learn over the course of the next three weeks. Energy transitions in coal country, growing green industry and innovation, mass timber, and low-carbon small business and post-COVID recovery. And beyond the lookout for a bonus briefing about the just transition taking place in coal communities. One last bit of logistics. After our final panelist, we will open up the floor for questions. So because we're online, I cannot call on you if you have a question. So if you have a question, the best way to ask it is by following EESI on Twitter at EESI online, or you can also send in an email, an email in your questions that way. The email address you should use is EESI at EESI.org. And with that dispensed with, now we'll move on to our panelists who are really exciting today. Our first panelist is Chaz, excuse me, Chaz Robles. Chaz began with the Southwest Conservation Corps in April 2012 as a field supervisor and co-led a disaster relief crew in New York in November 2020. I can't talk today, I'm sorry. It's the Labor Day weekend. And led a disaster relief crew in New York in November 2012 after Hurricane Sandy. In January 2013, he began as Ancestral Lands Program Coordinator, working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Acoma Pueblo to support existing programs and bring new conservation opportunities to tribal lands in the Southwest. Chaz became Ancestral Lands Program Director in 2015 and Corps Director in 2019. Chaz, welcome to the briefing today. I'm really looking forward to your remarks. Good morning. I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so it's still morning out here. But good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the intro, Dan. My name is Chaz Robles, Mexica, Chichimeca, Zacateco. My ancestors come from Central Mexico region, and I have the privilege of being the Corps Director of the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, which is a program of conservation legacy, a brief history on conservation legacy. We were created in 1998 as Southwest Youth Corps, and over the years have expanded. And that was Southwest Youth Corps was started in Durango, Colorado, and over the years we've expanded our programming into the Southwest. Our office is open in Salida, Colorado, Tucson, Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona, and our program in Ancestral Lands. And quickly continue to partner with new and versioning conservation corps across the country, so it no longer made a lot of sense for us to be called Southwest Youth Corps or Southwest Conservation Corps. And in 2014 we became conservation legacy. Conservation legacy runs crew-based and individual placement programs across the country with programs such as the Southeast Conservation Corps, based out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Appalachian Conservation Corps, Southwest Conservation Corps, and Arizona Conservation Corps, and the Stewards Program. So we do a lot of different programming across the country. My program, the Ancestral Lands Program, we were created in 2008. So for a number of years we saw a lot of conservation corps reaching out to Native communities, tribes, and Pueblos to recruit Native American youth and young adults into their programs. And there were a lot of successes, but we also saw a number of barriers to participation and barriers to successful completion of our young folks within these programs. And so in 2008, a gentleman named Cornell Terrivio, who was a crew leader with the Southwest Conservation Corps program out of Durango, and saw just all the great impacts that conservation corps programs were having on young folks from across the country, worked with our former president and CEO, Harry Broul, to instead of bring Native young folks into the conservation corps, to bring the conservation corps movement to our Native communities and our Native young folks where they were. And thus the Ancestral Lands Program was created. We started in the Pueblo of Acama, which is a Pueblo about 45 minutes west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. And over the years, we've had a number of other Pueblos and tribes and Native communities approach us and ask us to replicate the programs in their communities. So since our creation in 2008, we've seen an office develop in Gallup, New Mexico, serving the Navajo Nation to the Native young folks. That was in 2013 when I started as a program coordinator is when we opened that office. 2014 saw us partner with the Pueblo of Zuni in western New Mexico to open up an office serving Zuni young folks. In 2015, we opened our program here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, focusing on serving urban Native young folks and also partnering with some of the surrounding Pueblos here in Albuquerque. And then in 2017, we opened up our office in the Hopi Nation. So we currently have those five offices. We run fairly conventional Conservation Corps programming and that we are bread and butter is putting crews of young folks between five and 10 young folks in a field-based program. So they stay in the field for up to 10 or 12 days at a time completing various conservation and stewardship projects. So a lot of trail construction, habitat restoration, invasive species removal, and we have a pretty large historic preservation program primarily focusing on ancestral Puebloan sites. So it's a really great opportunity where we get to send the descendants of the folks who built those structures back in the 1100s and 1200s sites such as Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde. I think I was talking about our historic preservation programs when the energy cut out. So I'll pick it up from there and just give a little bit more information about the work that we're doing. As mentioning, we work with national parks such as Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde National Park, Aztec Ruins, El Moro, and El Malpais National Monuments, as well as nonprofit organizations like the Friends of Cedar Mesa to do work out in Utah on ancestral Puebloan dwellings. So it's a really cool opportunity to bring the descendants of the folks who built those structures centuries ago to come in and work to protect them for current and future generations to appreciate and enjoy. As well as, you know, for the cultural significance that they have to our people and to those folks who can trace their lineage to the ancestral Puebloans who built those structures. We also do, so we strive to incorporate cultural components into our programming whenever possible. And some of the ways that we do that are through our traditional farm core programs. We've been running a farm core in the Pueblo of Acoma for a number of years now and also we have worked in Zuni as well as Hopi to run some farming programs and really working to reconnect young folks with that heritage, with that culture of agriculture of farming. So not just farming traditional crops, heirloom variety crops but also reconnecting young folks to the cultural significance, the ceremonies and prayers and everything else that goes into providing food for our communities. That food often is given to the communities for free of charge, community members. So that food goes back into the community supporting tribal food sovereignty and reconnecting our young folks with those ways. We also run hiking club programs where young folks go out and learn how to recreate responsibly on the lands. They learn about the significance of the public lands that they're working on and that those lands hold significance not just because they are public lands that are open to them to go and enjoy with their families but also because their ancestors and their people have a long history of living with and communing with and stewarding those lands. Those lands are theirs not just because they're public lands but because they have those deep ties and connections to those lands. It's a good opportunity to bring in elders from our communities and have those intergenerational learning opportunities. The elders can come and share their wisdom and their knowledge with the young folks about these places they can learn. The young folks can learn about the significance of these places, the names of these places and the stories that are attributed to these places while learning about how to go out and recreate safely and responsibly and making that connection with the land that will serve them for years to come. One of our other main focuses is preparing our young folks for success in their professional lives too. We have a number of innovative programs that not only introduce young folks to the field of conservation and natural resource protection but also prepare them through trainings and earning certifications to be successful in their future endeavors. One of the programs that we're piloting this year is our High School Equivalency Diploma Program and that is where young folks spend. It'll be an 18-week program this year earning their High School Equivalency Diploma. So four days a week they go and work on conservation projects here in the city of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County. We're partnering with the city, with the county. We're partnering with these divisions. We're partnering with nearby national parks, Petroglyph National Monument by the Oro National Wildlife Refuge. They're going out and completing these important projects and then on Fridays they come here with our partner organization La Placita Institute here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They work towards earning their GED, their High School Equivalency Diploma. They get direct mentorship to complete those classes to earn that diploma. And then we're also doing other professional development like financial literacy classes, resume building workshops, USA Jobs workshops so that folks can learn how to build their resume and apply for jobs with federal agencies like the National Park Service and the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, et cetera. Another program that we were planning on running this year but COVID through a wrench in those plans is our Ecology Restoration Certificate Program partnering with Coconino Community College, EcoCulture, another great nonprofit, the National Forest Foundation, the US Forest Service. It'll be a six month program. Folks will come through that. It'll be field based where they're spending their weeks out completing ecological restoration projects like removing invasive species, planting native species and habitat, planning an ecological restoration project, applying herbicide to get different certifications like chainsaw certification backed by the US Forest Service that's taught by our staff, herbicide applicator's licenses and the applicable states, Arizona and New Mexico. All industry recognized certifications that will help them find employment and make a career out of natural resource protection, conservation and stewardship. And they'll also earn nine college credits while they're out getting paid to participate in this program as well as that Ecological Restoration Certificate that's industry recognized and that'll hopefully propel them into a career in this field. And so that's been a big focus of ours is to really prepare folks for those post-secondary education opportunities and for those career and job opportunities, making that connection for folks that come out of our program. Our goal is to have folks who are ending our program, leaving our program already have their next job lined up or already be enrolled in a post-secondary accredited program whether it's college, university, trades, or going into a related field. So that's really working to step up our program. We're planning with Coconino Community College and EcoCulture to run that program next year with at least one five-person crew for six months, hopefully being able to expand that to more young folks and get them that certification in that college credit. And there are a number of federal and state policies and programs that support our work. The Public Land Coalition, that has been something that's been very supportive of us through the years. We are a member of that coalition. We get some of the benefits to our participants of being a member of that coalition. One of the big things that we're looking at now that can really help us in the impacts that we've seen from COVID-19 in our budgets and the loss in revenue and everything else is having the cost share waiver that has been initiated in the fiscal year 21 interior appropriations bill, having that move forward that typically we provide a 25% cost share that we're bringing those funds to the table through our structure, typically through in-kind, sometimes through cash. And that's part of the requirement and that's something that we really appreciate is that we're invested in that, but in these hard financial times, having that waiver would be a huge benefit to our program and other conservation corps programs from what we've heard across the country. Obviously the Great American Outdoor Act is something that we're really looking forward to partnering with our agency partners to continue to complete really critical infrastructure projects for our parks, for our forests and grasslands with the BLM as well. The Indian Youth Service Corps is another really exciting opportunity for us. Part of the 21st Conservation Service Corps Act that was passed really focusing on providing opportunities that we've been providing. We feel like we're working with some other corps across the country and being at the forefront of this corps movement serving Native communities, Native young folks, and seeing that opportunity be expanded to other communities through the Indian Youth Service Corps. So we really appreciate the support and all the work that George McDonald and the Youth Programs Division have been doing with the National Park Service and looking forward to supporting that work moving forward and seeing these opportunities brought to more Native young folk across the country and more Native communities across the country. So that's it. Appreciate everybody's time. If you have any questions or follow-up or want to get in touch with me, my email address is chaz-c-h-a-s-at-conservation-legacy.org. Our website is www.ancestrallands.org. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, looking for the Ancestral Lands Program. Appreciate your time and appreciate your support. Tiawi, Tasupamati. Our second panelist will start with him or we'll pick up with him, I should say. Michael French is the Director of Operations of Green Forests Work, a nonprofit that is committed to restoring green forest habitat on lands that were impacted by coal surface mining. Through this program, GFW is improving the economy and environment in the Appalachian region by providing employment and future economic opportunities by implementing ecological restoration projects. Michael also serves as Co-Chair for the Science Team of the Appalachian Regional Rest Reforestation Initiative. Michael received his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees from the University of Kentucky where he focused his studies on American chestnut restoration and surface mine reforestation. Michael, welcome. Thanks for being flexible with our program today, but I'm really looking forward to what you'll have to say and I'll leave it to you to take away. Okay. Well, thank you. I'll go ahead and share my screen and... Okay. So, I'm the Director of Green Forests Work. We're a nonprofit organization that we identified a problem with reforestation across the Appalachian region. So, we started this nonprofit and our mission is to restore healthy, productive native forests on lands that have been disturbed by surface mining across the Appalachian region. And in doing so, we're not only improving the environment of the Appalachian region, but we're also creating economic opportunities and employment opportunities in doing so. So, before the surface mining control and Reclamation Act was passed, reforestation was a common practice on surface mines. And in a lot of cases, the trees were doing very well, as you can see from these black walnuts in southern Indiana, or from these white oak in southern Illinois, or these loblolly pine plantations in western Kentucky. A lot of times the mining companies would come in, they'd extract the coal, they'd leave piles of loose overburden there and trees would naturally regenerate, or they would plant trees. And they've been harvesting saw logs and veneer quality timber off of a lot of these older surface mines for decades now. So, in surface mining, reforestation was commonplace, but there were a lot of other problems associated with surface mining. This is a picture of Letcher County, Kentucky, from the 1960s, and this is a practice called shooting shove mining, where the mining companies would drill down to the coal seam, they'd blast off the rock overburden and they'd just push it over the hillside. And it created these unstable landforms. Sometimes trees would grow up in them, but those landslides would come down the hills, fill up streams, boulders would come through people's houses, damaged roads, and there were some fatalities associated with this as well. There weren't really standardized reclamation practices across the board, so there was widespread erosion and sedimentation of streams and large water quality problems. Sometimes hazardous landforms were just left in place like this dangerous high wall that you can see on the right. And sometimes the mining companies would leave toxic or acid producing material on the surface. This is a site in Pennsylvania that was mined in the early 1900s, and the pH of the soil there is about 2.6. So, the federal government stepped in and passed the surface mining control and reclamation act of 1977, which standardized reclamation practices across the board. It provided oversight to state agencies, and their focus was eliminating the problems with human health and safety, eliminating the landslides, boulders coming through people's houses, and protecting water quality. So in passing this law, they said that mining companies had to restore the land to an approximate original contour, which means they had to put the mountains back in the shape that they were in before they were mined. You couldn't leave the cliffs in place. Mining companies had to declare a post-mining land use to say what the land would become after the mining was completed. Would it become forest land? Would it become residential commercial? Would it be hay pasture land or something else? And it required that mining companies put up a monetary bond before mining commenced so that if they didn't reclaim the land as they stated that they would, the government would have a pool of money to go back to and restore the land. And it was good. They did a lot of good things with this. They addressed the human health and safety issues, water quality improved, but reforestation really took a back seat, especially in the Appalachian region. This is a photograph of where the law was implemented. You can see in the background trees were doing well before the law was implemented, but in the foreground, there just aren't many trees. So what happened in post-smacra reforestation? In an effort to achieve landform stability, eliminate the landslides, mining companies began compacting the surface material. They would put it back up against the dangerous cliffs. They'd track it in with bulldozers. And it created a really compacted surface, basically like a gravel parking lot. Those compacted soils would inhibit root penetration, gas exchange and water infiltration. And that led to a lot of seedling mortality. Tree planting failures became really commonplace. So if the mining company had declared the post-mining land use to be forest land afterwards, they would plant the trees. The trees would all die. They'd have to plant them again. The trees would die again. They'd have to plant them again. It became very expensive. And sometimes they couldn't even get their bond money back. So they went away from forestry as a post-mining land use and started doing widespread implementation of hay pasture land as a post-mining land use or wildlife habitat. And they became very successful and skilled in this. You can see this here. This was one of the first post-smacra forest land permits where they were supposed to stop doing the compaction, but they didn't understand anything else. And you can see how many times a bulldozer has run up and down over this hillside. And if you try and plant a tree in there, it's really difficult. You end up just hurting your hands a lot of times. You can see how these bulldozers are packing the hillsides in there on this contour mine. So like I said, tree planting failures became really commonplace. This is a combination of both form surface material. The growth medium is not very good, but also that's highly compacted and those trees are really suffering. This is a seven-year-old red oak that was planted in a post-smacra conventional reclamation condition. They compacted the surface really tight and then they hydro-seeded aggressive grasses and legumes, which were used to prevent erosion and green the area up, get vegetation back on the sites. But I want you to remember this seven-year-old red oak here. So where we once had forests across the Appalachian region, Hay and pasture land became a post-mining land use of choice for the mining companies. It was easy for them to get their bond money back and then they could move on and mine a different area. So about 750,000 to a million acres across Appalachia were converted from forests to other land uses from the 1980s through the mid to early 2000s. So this is a map of the Coalfields region across Appalachia and there are about 1.7 million acres that have been bond released and another 700,000 acres that have been currently permitted for surface mining. And a lot of the areas after smacra was introduced when they would convert them to these hay pasture lands, people weren't using them as hay and pasture land. They weren't grazing cattle on them. They weren't cutting hay off of it. So invasive species moved into these areas. So a friend of mine calls this an arboretum of what not to plant. There's a lot of autumn olive in there. There's multi-flora rows, bush, honey, just a lot of invasive exotic species on these areas. So it becomes even more problematic when these lands are left unmanaged. So the federal government recognized that they had a problem and they created the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative whose mission was to get mining companies to plant more high value native hardwoods, increase the survival and growth rates of those trees, and speed up the establishment of native forest habitat on surface mines. They did this by listening to the university researchers who had been studying mindland reforestation for decades and knew what the problem was. So they came up with the forestry reclamation approach which said to leave four feet of the best available growth medium on the surface, avoid compacting it, lightly seed tree compatible ground covers, native species when possible, and plant a variety of trees, early successional trees and high value hardwood trees which would later become your crop trees like your oaks, yellow poplar, black cherry, things of that nature, and then use proper tree planting techniques. And as the researchers already knew, it worked. This is a 17-year-old forestry reclamation approach planting in Kentucky where they're looking at the white pines and yellow poplar that are doing extremely well. And this is a seven-year-old FRA planting in West Virginia. I want you to take a look at the oak on the left and take a look at the poplars on the right and think about that seven-year-old oak tree and the compacted spoil and the aggressive ground covers from before and just look at the difference that you can get here. This is a site that we did in 2009 before planting where we plugged the drain in a hollow fill and restored the surface flow to flow across. It was a stream reconstruction and we used the forestry reclamation approach on the side slopes. This is it in 2009. Here's the same site in 2017. Here's the site in 2019. So you can see the difference there. So we started doing this with the active mining industry, but a lot of these areas that had been bond released, there was no obligation on the part of the mining company, the federal government, state government, the landowner, or any other entity to perform further reforestation measures. This is a 30-year-old site that was reclaimed to hay pasture land and you can see the forest is very slow to regenerate. There are only a couple of species growing in there, mostly black locust. It's low biodiversity and a lot of these areas would take decades, if not centuries, to recover a native forest type. And there's about a 750,000 to a million acres of this out there. So we created this nonprofit as an offshoot of airy to reestablish healthy and productive forests on formerly mined lands across Appalachia. We implement a modified forestry reclamation approach because we can't select the growth medium. It's already been placed there on the surface. And we work on those lands where there's no obligation on the part of any other entity to do further reforestation. We work with private landowners, public land managers, and we go in and do large-scale ecological restoration projects. So this nonprofit started as a petition to the White House, basically a civilian conservations course style, the jobs program to create jobs across the Appalachian region and do these ecological restoration projects. It wasn't funded. We continued on anyway. The Appalachian Regional Commission took notice of what we were doing and gave us startup funding to formalize the 501C3. So now we rely on grants, donations, and partnerships to implement these projects. Our modified FRA says control unwanted vegetation through mechanical or chemical means, mitigate compacted ground, plant a variety of trees, and use proper tree planting techniques. And to do this, we hire professional contractors to come out and do it. We work with volunteer groups from K-12 schools, colleges and universities, environmental groups, and others to do these projects. But here we've hired a couple of contractors to come out, clear away all of the invasive species that are there, all of that unwanted vegetation, get it back down to a blank slate. But you can still see that we've got that compacted growth medium to deal with. So after we've cleared out the unwanted, exotic invasive vegetation, we use a contractor to bring in a large bulldozer to mitigate that compaction. They put these ripping shanks into the ground. They rip it generally in two different directions to four feet deep. It's basically like tilling your garden, except on a forest scale. It allows water to infiltrate the soil. It slows runoff, prevents runoff. And it allows tree roots to extend in all directions. It also speeds up the natural succession process by allowing native seeds to rain down on the area, preserving native genotypes as well. And then, like I said, we hire professional contractors or get volunteer groups out here to plant a variety of trees. And we're focused on improving two aspects of Appalachia. The environmental infrastructure, we're restoring the ecosystem processes that native forests provide to society from clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, things of that nature, as well as creating economic and employment opportunities for the people of Appalachia. We're creating jobs for seed collectors, nurseries who are growing the trees, bulldozer operators, equipment operators, and we're restoring the forest-based economy. Before Appalachia was a coal mining-based economy, it was a forest-based economy, so we're trying to restore that to the region. In restoring these ecosystem services, we're looking at habitat restoration, improving the hydrology and water quality of the area. By ripping the ground and loosening it up, it increases storage on these areas. And as the forest grows, the trees are going to uptake and utilize more water, so it affects the entire water budget of these areas and can buffer watersheds from storm events helping to mitigate flash flooding. And we're improving air quality as well by increasing particulate interception and, of course, climate change mitigation as a big part of this. By increasing the productivity of the land, we're increasing carbon accumulation rates on these areas as well, not only in the above-ground biomass, but also in the soil microbial community and the litter as well. We often say that surface mines sometimes make the best places for sequestering carbon. Because the soils were blasted off and buried during the mining process, we're dealing with mineral soils that are initially deficient in organic carbon and they can serve as carbon sinks for decades. In doing these projects, we're also reducing forest fragmentation and the threats that they pose by creating edge habitat in forest landscapes. This is the Daniel Boone National Forest, where there is a 29-acre hole in the forest which allows nest parasites to come in, as well as invasive species. It's a reservoir for invasive species. So by restoring the native forest habitat in there, we're eliminating that threat to the flora and fauna of the area. Like I said, we're improving the hydrology of these areas. You can see how this has been fluffed up after ripping, and you can also see to the left one of the wetlands that we've created there. It's increasing the storage so that as the water comes in, as rain events come in, it soaks up that water. It acts like a sponge and then slowly releases it from the system so it's not just a flash runoff event that was previously there from that compacted surface mine. This is a site on the Monongahila National Forest in West Virginia, where we've created about 1,300 wetlands so far. They're different sizes, and they vary with the seasons as well. So they're different depths, different sizes to provide habitat for a diversity of wildlife and also a diversity of conditions for the vegetation of the area. By loosening the soil, we're creating these micro sites for reptiles, amphibians, small mammals, insects. It's no longer like a golf course. We've roughed it up so that there's a lot of different habitats as well by pulling up these boulders. It's creating shelter in homes for different insects and different flora. There are a lot of pollinator benefits to this work as well. When we remove that unwanted invasive exotic vegetation, a lot of times we see a flush in the native species that come back, and it benefits not only the native pollinators, but also honeybees. From 2009 through 2020, we've had about 390 different projects or volunteer planting events across 10 different states. We've involved more than 17,000 volunteers and hundreds of partners from NGOs, colleges, government agencies. We've reforested about 5,000 acres of the Appalachian region through the planting of about 3.1 million trees. In doing so, like I said, we're creating jobs for seed collectors, equipment operators, nursery workers, tree planters, and secondary industries benefit as well by bringing people and workforce into the region. The hospitality, retail, transportation, and service industries also benefit as they're spending money throughout the region. This work creates future economic opportunities for forest management, the production of timber and non-timber forest products, eco-asset credits, and tourism and recreation as well, things like hunting leases and just the beautification of the area which we'll draw in tourists. So here we've got one of our nurseries lifting some of the trees that we would be planting. Those are a bunch of oaks. Here are a couple of pictures of our equipment operators in action ripping up the land and also creating wetlands for us. Here's some of our professional tree planting crews. Every year, they're planting hundreds of thousands of trees for us. We've worked with Conservation Legacy, which Chaz was talking about before the Internet failed forum. This is the Appalachian Conservation Corps crew. We've contracted them to come in and plant some wetlands on the Monongahela National Forest. They've also spread hundreds of pounts of native grasses and wildflower seeds across the restoration areas that we've done there. And we're working with those crews. We'll be working with them on the Daniel Boone National Forest pretty soon to do invasive species control. And they've done trail building through these projects as well for mountain bikers and hikers in the area. So why are we doing this? You know, forests, like I said, restoring that forest economy is critically important for the Appalachian region. In Kentucky alone, there's about $9.1 billion in direct economic contribution of the forest through the timber industry. About 28,000 jobs in the forest industry and when you include the secondary jobs as well, about 57,000 jobs out there. And the University of Kentucky did a study and they looked at opportunities and they realized that if we were utilizing the forest properly and doing sustainable management and harvesting and things like that, it could create another 14,000 additional jobs and another $2.4 billion in value added annually. So it's a regenerative economy that we're trying to create here. And it also ties in with the just transition. As the decline for Appalachian coal continues, coal mining jobs in Kentucky are at their lowest levels in a century and more than a century. So we're trying to create employment opportunities so that people want to stay in the region and take pride in the land that they're living in. So we're doing this for a multitude of reasons. And why now? You know, there's no reason not to do this work here. The Appalachian region historically has had higher unemployment rates, higher poverty rates, greater income inequality rates, and the nation as an average. So it's, you know, really the perfect program for the perfect area. And we intend to continue doing this work. You know, we've got, like I said, about a million acres out there and, you know, I see us just increasing this as our brand recognition grows and as our name grows out there because we're still a young nonprofit organization. And I just wanted to end with this quote from Wangari Mathai. The act of planting a tree reconnects the human sphere to the beauty and importance of the natural world, the basis for all life on Earth. So I'll end there. That was a great presentation, Michael. Thank you very much. Really, really cool program. And it looked like a lot of fun for those volunteers and for those workers to be out there too. And a great way to give back like the quotation at the end of your presentation said. Two quick things. One, we're trying to reconnect with Chaz. So with any luck, we'll be able to give him some time after our next set of panelists for him to sort of offer some additional remarks. We're doing our best to get back in touch with him. Second, a reminder about questions. If you have questions and you would like to ask them of our panelists, the best way to do that is by following the ESI on Twitter at ESI online and asking us that way. You can also send us an email and the email address at ESI.org, and we're getting questions in. So thank you very much for those who are offering them. After we hear from our next two panelists, we'll dig into those questions right away. Speaking of our next two panelists, I'm going to introduce them together because they're going to be tag-teaming their presentation. Our first of the two is Tanya Gale. She is the Chief Development Officer at Green City Force where she oversees fundraising and external communications. She is a board member of the Core Network, which focuses on national service and environmental advocates of New York, which focuses on environmental justice. Tanya has spent her career in the human services sector working in nonprofit organizations, largely focused on economic justice for young people of color. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University. She is a native Brooklynite, and she's passionate about providing young people with viable paths to create and lead a just and equitable world. And her co-presenter on this presentation is Joshua Owens. Joshua is the Project Manager of the Social Enterprise at Green City Force, where he manages special projects involving Green City Force alumni. I like the way he began with his organization. He brings a unique skill set to the team, and he's passionate about mentoring young adults. He was introduced to Green City Force in late 2014 by a relative who was also an alumnus of cohort nine. And when you find a good organization, sometimes you just stick around. He's been part of the team ever since. So that's Joshua's story. Tanya, turn it over to you and to Josh, and really look forward to your presentations. Thank you so much for joining us today. Great. Thank you for having us today. We're very excited to join you. I'm just going to share my screen here. So, yeah, Josh and I will be presenting together. And let's see. Make sure I can get to the next. There we go. Okay. So, yeah, we're really happy to talk to you today about Green City Force National Program. You've already done introduction, so I'll just move on to the content here. So, Green City Force, we are a nonprofit based in New York City, and we're really about bringing young people who come from New York City public housing communities into the green economy through national service. Our core members are driving a sustainability transformation within the public housing communities that they come from. And so, as young adults, they are leaders in building a transformation, sustainability initiatives in their low-income communities across New York. It's a focus on black and brown leadership within the public housing sector where they are actually building skills and resources and workforce training that allows them to be frontline competitive candidates for career tracks within the sector beyond their service term and they're coming to us without any previous experience or exposure to that type of work. So, it's a transformative model that includes growth and opportunity for the individuals as well as the communities they come from. This is a shot of one of our cohorts in New York a couple years back. We are New York City's basically green core, and we do sustainability initiatives within the public housing sector as well as aligned with New York City and the New York City public housing community for sustainability priorities. So, our service initiatives and our priorities are based all within the green economy and will vary in different activities and areas largely tied to energy efficiency depending on the moment in time and needs of the city and the community. And we build the skill sets and the training platforms and the service platforms for the young people depending on what the current need is in that moment in time. As I said, we focus on the... So, NYCHA is New York City Housing Authority. That's the acronym that represents the population and communities we serve. Within that group, there are approximately 50,000 people within the age of 18 to 24 out of an overall community that Josh will speak to shortly of one in 15 New Yorkers within that group, 72% of those young people prior to COVID were unemployed and had no viable platforms for next-step employment or sustainable careers of family supporting economic opportunities. At the same time, within New York City, the Housing Authority represents a gigantic carbon footprint within the city. There are New York City action and climate goals that are coming with lots of investments tied to energy efficiency, workforce opportunities. And so, Green City Forest is connecting the dots between that unemployment need within the young people and the need and call to action to build a pipeline of resources and talent to address these climate issues that are existing within New York City. I'm going to hand it on to Josh now. I was going to talk a little bit more specifically about NYCHA and who we work with. Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Tonya. So here's a photo of select NYCHA developments. Over the years, NYCHA has been super important to GCF being one of our biggest partners. We have completed countless amount of work across the years within NYCHA, ranging from work from energy efficiency from a project we created called Love U Live to educate residents on ways to live more sustainable by reducing their water usage, reducing their energy usage, and all around just thinking different to help lower their carbon footprint. So NYCHA is massive within scale just to shed some light to it. It spreads across all five boroughs. There's 326 NYCHA developments. It houses over 500,000 tenants. And it's the biggest housing developer within the country. So it's huge and it's been important to us. We look to recruit all of our youth, all of our young adults for our program directly from NYCHA. So that's a key factor. We look to recruit youth between the ages of 18 to 24 and just give them the skills that they need to be successful. So they come in, they work with us, they come back and it's creative because they're giving back to their community. The communities that they come from doing the work, that's super important to not only us, but our planet, right? Just to sustain it. So it's been great, but we're not done. That's true. Thanks, Josh. And so to Josh's point, NYCHA is a city within a city, 500,000 people is larger than Atlanta or Boston. And so again, this focus of community members, we mentioned, you see the age range there. They're engaged with us full time through AmeriCorps, ranging in a six to eight month time of service. And they're really having impactful skills, building opportunities. And as we said, building their knowledge and leadership within the environmental sector. And they're doing it from an urban lens. And they're representing it as part of an urban core, New York City service core. And the model is built on the design of leading to employment opportunities. The whole purpose of the engagement is service is so that the young people can complete and be ready for competitive opportunities within employment, sector specific. Again, largely focused on energy, but there's a range which we'll speak to in a bit as well as some innovative models tied to energy retrofits through our social enterprise. We have wraparound support services in our program so that the young people who are in service and beyond can have the support systems they need and resources, whether that be financial social services or otherwise. We have full time social workers on staff, as well as career guides and coaching during and beyond the time that the members are in our program. This is an example overview of the different sectors where our young people are placed post service term. Again, we'll get into more specifics of that going forward, but you can see energy efficiency, utilities, waste management, green infrastructure, community health because young people in our program are themselves gaining skills and then returning to their communities and driving education and behavior change and educating others in their community about how they can change their behavior tied to sustainability. It also builds a skill set that will sometimes lead to opportunities for employment as community health initiatives or outreach professionals as well. This slide is really an important one to focus on in terms of the idea of a proven approach, right? So there's a lot of conversation nationally and otherwise about the need for a green job core and opportunities. GCF is one of a number of conservation cores and a handful of urban conservation cores which are a proven model. GCF has over 10 years had an average of 80% of our graduates who are unemployed or underemployed coming to us with a high school degree and no other career training or professional training. And it's actually a higher now at 83% on average over the 10 years. We have over 500 graduates of our program. The past three years, our placement rate has actually been 96% where the young people have within six months been able to be in jobs or schools following their service term. And so this is something that is an absolutely scalable and necessary way to think about what the green economy could and should look like going forward. We also are continuing to like build partnerships and platforms to like obviously want to build more opportunities for young people to come into this type of model so that they can be successful and contribute as leaders going forward. This is a snapshot of the member journey, the core member journey. So on the far left you'll see we recruit young people as Josh said from the public housing community across New York City. They are only requirements are that they are a NYCHA resident and that they completed a high school credential and they're within the ages of 18 to 24. We bring them into service through recruitment and orientation and cohorts and groups. They work in teams collectively to learn together to build leadership together to inform how we should best approach engagement with their communities. And then on the third column service and training you see they're deployed into their own communities. They're literally knocking on doors. They're building and managing farms and gardens, growing food, teaching others about composting, recycling, energy efficiency. And they're also building 20% of their time professional skills and technical training so that they can then go into alumni hood in various sectors, try to sustainability for long-term impact and then becoming leaders beyond that as leaders in sustainability messaging and education beyond their time with us formally in service. This is a great shot. I love this shot. Josh and his colleagues I'll let him tell you a little bit about that experience now. Yeah. So this was a picture that was taken back in, I believe late 2014. We were out in Farakua, Queens, scoping out a home that we were looking to install solar panels on within the next few days. So we basically just got the lay of the land, what it takes to do the work, obviously going over all the safety protocols and what it would look like once we actually got out there. It was a great day. As you can see it's some smiles on some of our faces. It's pretty scared as you see him holding the edge, but over and all the experience was great. For me it was life changing. After that, I really, really wanted to be involved in what was going on here and just trying to live a more sustainable life myself. So I could preach it the right way. So this was, this was definitely a good day. So some examples of our iconic service initiatives. And we build service and priorities based on the needs of the time within the authority in the city, but broadly speaking, our iconic large scale initiatives have historically been farms at NYCHA where we have built and managed over six urban farms on NYCHA property where we've grown over at this point, I believe over a hundred thousand pounds of produce that is organic and free and accessible to the residents in exchange for volunteer or composting time. It's a community driven model tied to nutrition and then love where you live, which is our other iconic signature model of how we engage residents through what we call a credible messenger idea, young people coming from the communities, being the drivers of the message of the need to change and build a more sustainable model within. Those are the two broad signature programs. Here's just a quick overview of some of our major outcomes. Historically, you could see significant impact within reaching NYCHA residents recycling, like both swapping from our farms. We've had studies tied to food policy and others where we've been able to evaluate the economic savings tied to food access for the residents from the communities of these low income NYCHA developments, as well as the reach for farm based learning for young people, as well as community engagement through weekly farm stands and other initiatives here. This is a overview of what we're calling as our next iteration of what our place based models will look like. Our farms are being transformed into what we call eco hubs, which really means we're trying to build in across our five sites within NYCHA layered levels of sustainability, whether that's solar water, rainwater catchment, ultimately moving towards a closed loop model where we're continuing to use the resources like our local and the community investment to build a longer term, healthier, more sustainable and also economically viable model given again the idea of this model happening from a low income community as a demonstration project that is scalable and replicable across other cities and other communities. Here's some examples of some of our graduates, Solonia, working in energy education, Domingo, a leader in composting across New York City who's now got his own business tied to that work. We have strong employer partnerships where we have group hires at some point. Examples like Franklin energy and energy other things, which are sometimes individual placements, whether it be landscaping or individual hires, solar work, what have you. Again, just an overview of the sector. You can see a majority of our graduates are working in energy building roughly 65%. And then we have an arm of our employment next step where we've created jobs and I'll let Josh speak to our staff. I'm going to talk about the enterprise work where we are building sector skills and a longer term skill set opportunity for folks. Yeah, definitely. So our shelter enterprise was created to create a pipeline for returning alumni to come and work with us on our current contracts that we have existing at that moment. Two of our most dominant scope of works has been in New York, which is one contract we run with in partnership with NYSERDA and ConA where we get a provided list of referrals to go out to people who's pre-qualified and do energy audits within their home and amongst other things. And then one of our main contracts, which is our EPC work, the energy performance contract, which we work in relationship with NYCHA to create a retrofit, NYCHA on a huge scale. It's the biggest retrofit project in the country. And basically we come in to educate residents, like Tom, like Tom you mentioned before, we come in to educate residents on sustainability. We make three run-throughs of each unit to try to successfully get into that unit to speak to the resident and educate them on ways to reduce their usage as well as swapping out inefficient lighting, aerators and shower heads to try to reduce that water flow as well. We've been really, really successful at it. The pitch on the last side, it lists as a demonstration of our team in full force at even more houses in the Bronx. This is a circle of probably around seven in the morning we get started pretty early to address what we call a two box talk, which is a safety meeting where we just basically do a quick run-through of expectations for the day, the team assignments and who would be paired together, we pair two alumni together to go to these units for safety purposes and just to feed off each other to help one another. But during these circle ups, we usually just get the lay of the way and we address safety because it's our number one priority, keeping our young people safe in these communities that we go in. So yeah, we've been pretty successful just to end that before I get to this last side. We've been pretty successful since 2017 when we first started on our energy performance work, we made some mistakes, right? Like everyone does what we learn from it. And I believe we're really, really good at it to shed some light to it. We've been able to do 40,000 departments over 40,000 units in the last three years. We've been able to swap almost 200,000 bugs, just over a thousand aerators and a thousand shower heads. And we've pretty much been able to complete 90% of the units of developments we come to to shed light to what that means. If we come to development where there's a thousand units, right? We've been able to get into 900 of those without these residents. They don't have to allow us to come to the apartment, right? It's not mandated. So it's just our guys go in there to do the footwork, do the outreach, and just do it with passion. And we've been pretty successful at that. Our highest completion rate to date was 94% completion at I forget the development, which sucks. But we've been able to do it and we've been pretty successful at it. Moving on to this slide, this is a great young guy I worked with back in 2017. He worked with us on our energy performance contract and just to shed some light to one of his achievements here with us, he was able to move on to start a apprenticeship program with Local 3, which is a hard union to get into. He was really dedicated about it. I worked with him personally, so I'm hoping he sees this today. He was an amazing young guy. He always asked a lot of questions. He was the type of guy to get there first, leave last. And even though he was great, he would come every morning and say, what could I do better? And we would tell him, nothing. You're like killing it. You're great. And this is just proof to his dedication and I hope he's doing well. Shout out to him. So in terms of next steps, I just want to point out that the way our model works is the AmeriCorps program. We have federal investment through AmeriCorps, but at the state level in New York City, the energy authority has made a commitment to investing $70 million in clean energy workforce funding and they have prioritized populations including AmeriCorps and conservation cores. This is an example of what can be replicated in terms of policy input in other parts of the country. We talked a bit about the other sectors of our alumni work. So I'll just go through these quickly. Horticulture, nutrition and food, zero waste. So a third of the investment for the service members is through AmeriCorps national investment. We're looking for city and state complementary investment, whether that's at the state level or city level. We're looking for line items. We're looking for a way to have built in commitment to conservation cores and use them in order to provide opportunities for more young people like our core members to have opportunity for growth. We also want to call for AmeriCorps to be more impactful and expansive about the ways that they support young people in service that includes increased stipends for folks coming from these low income communities and the need to include investments around the support services that are necessary in order to make sure that they're successful. And then you can see a third also of our investment is from private resources. And a lot of our contract work, as Josh mentioned, an example of the largest energy retrofit in the country is the one currently underway within NYCHA, multi years of investment. More of that type of government and other commitments to investing in this work is key to our funding model. I just want to wrap up by saying we as GCF are part of a larger core network of over 130 conservation cores doing really important work around bringing young people into leadership. These are some examples of the urban ones across the country, Austin, Philadelphia, California and it really is an important model for us to think about in terms of scalability and investment specific to meeting the needs that fit this particular criteria, particularly at this moment of an intersection of racial economic and environmental injustice. This is a solution that we think is real and necessary and needs to improve. So thank you, we appreciate your time and definitely happy to have some answers for questions. Great, thank you. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you, Josh. Josh, I enjoyed your presentation but you kept saying you were pretty good, pretty successful and I think maybe time to drop out the pretty and maybe exchange it for very, very good, very successful. Looks like you guys are doing great stuff. Just in general, Michael, Tanya and Josh, congratulations on what your programs have been able to accomplish so far. It's great to see the metrics and the light bulbs and all of that stuff with the people that you've impacted in a positive way. This is really meaningful and exactly the kind of stories we were hoping to get to our audience today. So thank you very much. We are going to turn to questions now as a quick reminder, if you have questions we've been getting them in. So thank you to our audience. If you have more questions or you have other questions you can follow us on Twitter at EESI online. You can also send us an email and we'll get in touch with Chaz. I'm not sure it's going to work out for the next 17 or 18 minutes or so so we'll put our heads together with him and try to figure out a new way to bring his story to our audience maybe using another medium or another approach but obviously we're sad to have missed his presentation today and we'll be back in touch with him and following up. It is now my pleasure to introduce my colleague Amber Todorov. Amber is the organizer of today's session and has done a ton of work over the entire course of Workforce Wednesdays. She's my co-moderator today and she's going to kick off Q&A. Hi, thanks so much you guys. This is a wonderful project to hear about. So I guess my first question which is kind of throwing it back to last week in game of high schoolers and green careers could you do you guys work with high schools what does that work? Well I'll go first, yeah we work with a lot of high schools we bring them out from the local community we work with high schoolers and middle schoolers local colleges and universities we bring them out we teach them about the history of their area the history of reforestation on surface mines and then we teach them how to plant trees and how trees benefit them and their local community and everything sometimes we have different projects where it might be a riparian restoration they learn about water quality or the wildlife of the area different things of that nature so education we started this with basically two parts to our mission it was environmental and economic but then we realized that education was a huge part of it as well so yeah we always try and involve student groups when we can Yeah for GCF we actually don't work with high schools in any sort of traditional way really we actually had a group of high school students come to us last year and Solicit interviews because they were doing a in-house sustainability competition which was tied to funding and they wanted to feature Green City Force and they came to interview us to learn about our program and this group of amazing high school freshmen basically pitched our program and were able to like raise a thousand dollars for us in support of our work so we really were drawn by our work and sustainability in terms of recruitment because our graduate sorry because our members are required to either complete high school and many of our young adults have not been traditional high school students we don't formally recruit through that process our largest partnership is really through two big groups one the housing authority itself which has a whole arm of workforce and community engagement that works in partnership with us and we're part of a public private partnership city initiative under the mayor's office of criminal justice where literally over 30 CBO partners city agencies youth programs community centers wraparound groups within 15 neighborhoods with the highest rates of violent crime in NYCHA collectively to engage young people and bring them into our program so they're not specific to high schools but it's overlapping within that group how we reach some high school students wow that's so cool so you both mentioned all the great work that you've been doing so how can you scale this work what kind of federal support or local support would you need to expand your operations well I guess I'll go first just increased awareness of this at the highest levels of government the importance of it the benefits of it things of that nature because there is some funding available through the farm bill reclaim the pilot AML pilot there is some funding for reforestation but it's just not enough and sometimes private landowners especially some of the I guess impediments to it there's a lot of paperwork sometimes involved encumbrances on their properties things of that nature but we are seeing a lot more private investment in it as well but yeah to scale it up it's just a matter of funding whether it comes through private capital or through federal investment yeah we've got proof of concept it's just a matter of finding ways to drive funding to this and to align everything at the federal level I would say conservation corps need to have dedicated line of commitment whether that's comparable to like youth build for example has aligned in HUD and others we have AmeriCorps opportunities there's talk within congress around expanding that but like to really be thoughtful about what that means on the ground in terms of the actual needs of the participants means like beyond stipend which is necessary being mindful that to really reach the broad range of people you know basically afflicted by the issue of unemployment right now like pre and certainly post COVID to be very comprehensive in what those resources mean whether that means increased stipends whether that means funding for wrap around supports like an expansion of the way AmeriCorps funding is deployed and then absolutely some dedicated lines that are specific to these populations at the state level similar to the example we gave through NYSERDA at the state level you know committing priority population funding opportunities particularly now is really critical and then more than anything you know obviously consistent sustained multi-year anchor investment that doesn't depend on like a one-off year to year effect is really critical to have capacity building across the conservation cores nationally and as well as an understanding of what urban cores in particular would need to be successful and understand those discrepancies and differences is really important. I'm going to ask a question that's come in from our audience and it actually kind of a good segue it's about funding and sort of how your programs operate the basic question is sort of where do your programs get funding you've answered it in different ways and so Michael I'm interested if you could love to hear your response but I'd like to hear a little bit more about maybe how your pie chart looks Tanya had said you know state, local, federal private sources would love to learn a little bit more about how your work is funded and then Tanya you mentioned the fee for service the performance contract that you're working on what are the other kinds of fee for service options that you think you might have that your program might have at its disposal that you're or that you're exploring but Michael maybe we'll start with you to maybe understand a little bit more about sort of all the different funding sources that come together to let you do your work okay yeah our funding sources it's fairly well balanced our pie chart you know it's probably about a third government contracts government grants one third foundational support you know we've got a lot of partnering organizations the Arbor Day Foundation National Fish and Wildlife Foundation others and then about a third just general donations from individuals you know philanthropists who are interested in this work and you know for the federal side we've always got to have that one-to-one matched whether it's cooperative agreement with the U.S. Forest Service or somebody like that so that's where the foundations and the private investment really comes in we've got corporate sponsors like Komatsu who is a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment they've been a big supporter of ours over the years so it's kind of a mix of public private and foundations that support us and then we pair everything together and scale up our projects as large as we can Josh you want to start a little bit about empowering some of the other current social enterprise and I can speak to some of the other things that we are thinking about yeah definitely so our primary two projects like I mentioned before is Empower New York and our work on the energy performance contract just recently we did a complete work on the census we worked with the census to spread awareness on why that's so important and trying to get people to really really understand so they could fill out their census because it's important to our countries to our states we're funding to supply people that need the most and for the repairs and ends of that nature that we need but we're looking to work on other things obviously long term in the future but our main two projects has been the two I mentioned I could probably shed a little bit more light to our work on Empower which is similar to the work done within public housing on our EPC contract so we basically we get referrals from Naserta to do some outreach and then we try to come out and do some energy assessments within the residents home the teams are usually paired up in two as I mentioned before for safety purposes and just to feed off of each other so during those audits our teams would come in to see if it's in complete combustion testing for gas leaks testing for CO2 if the residents don't have CO2 detectors or smoke or fire alarms we install combo alarms we take out their shower heads to try to make it more efficient if their shower heads are used in a higher GPM gallons per minute we try to lower that and meet the refrigerator to see if it's working efficiently and if it's not we put in a recommendation for that to be replaced we've been doing that work for years and our alumni they've been driving the train they've been really really good at it and we've been good partners with Naserta since because of the work they've done but oh no the work we do those are main things but we're looking at other opportunities now and I would say that across the conservation core community there are other cores that have a lot more contract work for their service initiatives than we do we started originally with the Cool Roots initiative with the New York City government when we first started and that was contract work to coat roof's white basically two arms of how we look to get additional fee for service the majority of our AmeriCorps service track is with traditional funding and not so much innovative but ideally we would love contracts that don't conflict with AmeriCorps policy basically long story short if we can get government contracts that are for fee for service we could use those resources to support our service core and if they're private or for profit companies that are having contract work like in the energy efficiency we would deploy that as a way for our graduates within the social enterprise to be able to get increased investment so we're definitely eager and looking at more of that and again some of our other partner cores around the country are doing more of that contract work tied to city priorities right so initiatives that need to be addressed whether it's you know local local sustainability initiatives that come with contracts we would love to have more of that basically looking to tie the city investments into direct support of these cores that can be the pipeline for frontline communities driving those changes and then getting the employment opportunities they need is what is really critical so here's another question from our audience what are your views on the efforts to establish a government funded or operated civilian conservation core like had existed in the depression any thoughts on that? Sure well again the core network represents 130 conservation cores across the country within that as I said a handful of urban cores so we feel there are examples and models currently of what that is whether you call it that or don't call it that but to recognize that this work is ongoing and that the input and the need for these cores to be at the table in messaging this work and what can help it to scale even further is really critical so I guess my short answer is I feel like tapping into what is existing currently in this work is the best efficient and proactive way to maximize what's potential is out there and needed in the short term I'll second that it already exists and why should they reinvent the wheel a lot of times it's just a matter of scaling what is already being done on the ground great we have lots of questions probably more questions today from our audience from the last couple briefings that we've had so this is great lots of interest in this topic and this was about metrics the question is sort of how do you go about estimating the impacts that you're having on your communities is that something that you do your groups do individually do you use local partners perhaps university partners and the question extends to emissions reductions potential secondary economic benefits how do you make your case with metrics maybe we'll start with you again Michael yeah well sometimes our work is tied in with research and things of that nature but we track a lot of data for all of our projects whether it's dollars invested or number of trees planted survival rates over time things of that nature volunteers volunteer hours volunteers under the age of 25 years old so we can track our youth involvement things of that nature and then you know we're still working out some of the models about carbon accumulation rates and things like that but those can be tied in as well and we're currently working on some proposals to look at at risk species benefits of it you know amphibians bats some of the other species that aren't tracked so we work a lot of times you know we'll have master's students at West Virginia University or University of Kentucky or elsewhere working on you know their projects with us you know what questions do we need to answer and things of that nature but yeah we track a lot of data for all of our projects number of jobs created Josh I'll let you start by talking about like what would like when you were in service and through social enterprise what are the examples of the data that you all track and then I can sort of add on to that the parts and how we work with partners for metrics oh yeah definitely so on our social enterprise data is extremely important to all of us here right to track the numbers and know the production the work we do on our contracts is production based right to generate revenue so we hold our head to that and the system we basically have created and set up just to explain what we do for our EPC work we come to a particular development we're assigned whatever it may be NYCHA and whoever the subcontractor is at that time we worked in a password arm rescue and constellation they would assign us 13 developments say for that year and we'll probably spend two months per site working through and trying to do the community base outreach trying to get a just trying to get into as many departments as we can our teams they move in pairs of two so it's usually one person doing the work and the installs and speaking to the resident while the other one is helping if they can and tracking what's going on what are we doing what are we swapping out what was that wattage based off this wattage they do that on paper copies and then from there they come back to our office space so usually when we come to development it's a pre-start and that I usually attend and we figure out a office space with that development and we have a full system set up at every site we go to so we bring printers we have laptops, radios for safety, scanners and basically and we have a data team so we have a data team on site so while the teams are doing the installs they complete the work they come back to do refills the waste the disposable lights the disposable aerators, shower heads whatever it may be and then they pass that paperwork directly off to the data team it's usually two people to work and coexistence with each other to make sure it's correct we don't want one eye on it so that data is entered in live we track it consistently day by day and then at the end of the day we're going over mistakes if it's things that's wrong we're addressing those mistakes directly with the person that made it so it's just no shame in it but we just want to address it and make sure it doesn't happen going on so we scan documents at the end of the day and then they're backed up into digital folders to keep forever and we'll always have that information and then we just cross-reference that in the spreadsheet of what the production is throughout the development so that's how I track it and we do it on our side and so from the service perspective it's similar that we're using data collection as actually part of the training experience as well not only at the graduate level but in the service level so as Josh mentioned examples of how we track service outcome data we also track metrics tied to our farm and place-based outcomes, pounds of food grown resident engagement we also absolutely track the outcomes of our participants so graduation rates employment salaries, wages, etc because as a workforce program that's a priority for us and then our partnerships vary through the city through NYCHA and we have spent the past four years working with the CUNY Food Policy Institute on a three-year evaluation study looking to take in beyond our GCF outcomes and so some of the nutrition and cost savings for food, etc ideally we've been wanting to work towards a pay for success model NYCHA as our major partner overseas obviously a lot of the content of metric outcomes and so our future vision would be to have a more robust way to be innovative in our funding and pay for success models and provide to metrics that's great that's really really interesting stuff the world of nonprofits funding and metrics pretty much what it all boils down to well this was wonderful a great panel Chaz if you're streaming if you're watching us right now sorry we're deprived of half of your presentation we'll do our best to get back in touch with you to help you tell your story but to Michael and to Tanya and to Josh thank you so much for joining us today excellent presentations and I said it before I'll say it again congratulations on all your good work today and good luck going forward you guys are doing really important stuff so we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy days to join us let me also thank Amber and our policy team that also includes Ellen and Anna communications team that includes Omri and Sidney and Daniel Bryan who's been helping us out behind the scenes with all these briefings let me also say thanks to our four fall interns Emma, Karen, Hamilton and Joseph they've been helping with questions and with social media and all that good stuff and we couldn't do anything that we do without our cadre of interns there's a slide up right now this is a survey if you have a few moments we'd really enjoy reading your feedback we take it all very seriously and we're always looking to improve if you missed anything from today you can visit us online www.esa.org everything all the slides and an archived webcast will be available and we also have permission from Chas to post his slides as well his remarks as well so if you missed anything never fear it's all online you just have to visit us there and you can access it one last thing a quick reminder actually two last things a quick reminder we have three more Workforce Wednesdays we have next Wednesday energy transition in cold country followed by growing green industry and innovation at mass timber and low carbon small business and post COVID recovery and also keep an eye out for our bonus briefing that should be announced this week and the best way one last time to stay up to date with all things EESI is to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter climate change solutions we're a couple minutes over apologies for that but thanks again to our panelists for joining us and thanks to those in our audience for joining us today to learn about a new spin on conservation court hope everyone has a great rest of your Wednesday thank you thanks for having us bye