Solve Unemployment by Equipping Young People for the Green Economy
Low-income communities around the world are grappling with persistently high rates of unemployment. According to a recent report, most young people want to address the climate crisis with their work. The International Youth Foundation (IYF) proposes a way to solve this by building a jobs pipeline for young people to start careers in sectors that will power the green energy transition through a Climate Adjustment Assistance Career Training program, modeled after the U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program, housed under the special presidential envoy for climate.
Elizabeth Vance from IYF told us more about her organization’s mission to connect young people with opportunities that will transform their lives. IYF’s moonshot would accelerate progress towards achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 4, 7 and 8: quality education, access to affordable, clean energy for all, and decent work and economic growth for all by 2030.
"IYF would re-work existing education and training institutions to build the critical skills required for the energy transition – by transforming how young people are oriented to, prepared for, and connected."
~ Elizabeth Vance, International Youth Foundation
UA: What inspired your moonshot idea?
IYF: We're seeing incredible inspiration and commitment from young people, as well as education and training systems that are targeted towards supporting them towards their futures.
Currently, there are jobs in traditional greening industries, and what facilitates traditional greening industries often has a lot to do with automation and seeking efficiencies. This makes the young person's job, even at entry-level, focused on higher-order thinking, which is more engaging than traditional entry-level positions. You need to be able to recognize patterns and see problems before they happen. You must come up with solutions to problems and present them to people with diverse perspectives. You also need to work on these multidisciplinary teams to make these systems-level changes. It's such a cool job that no one seems to be getting trained for!
UA: What Sustainable Development Goals are you championing?
IYF: SDGs: 4 and 7; Quality Education and Affordable and Clean Energy
The rapid pace of industrial transformation required to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in time to keep our world livable requires rapid, massive, and ongoing overhauls of training and education programs, not to mention methods to orient young people towards these opportunities. At the same time, firms and governments recognize the importance of this shift, presenting an opportunity for collective action.
We base our work on young people's interests and aspirations. In 2021, The Prince’s Trust came out with a really interesting report that found most young people want to address the climate crisis with their work. This got us thinking about how we can help find avenues for young people to do so. What we kept finding, however, were skill gaps. Where there was a lot of work, there was a missing pipeline toward working in the field.
The Climate Adjustment Assistance Career Training program would build the pipeline for young people to the jobs powering the energy transition critical to reducing industrial carbon emissions; this is due to carbon-intense industries, including steel and cement manufacturing. Rather than building a parallel education system, The Climate Adjustment Assistance Career Training program would re-work existing education and training institutions to build the critical skills required for the energy transition by transforming how young people are oriented to, prepared for, and connected.
UA: What impact do you hope to make?
IYF: The first major impact would be the social mobility function. The second is that firms are struggling to make these transitions, and the industries don't have enough people with these skills to be able to respond in an agile way. As a result, the energy transition is being hamstrung by the lack of access to qualified workers. We hope to positively impact both of these areas.
UA: What are your hopes for 2023?
IYF: Right now, we are developing and piloting a curriculum. I'm most inspired by the notion of being able to scale these, not just as a pilot, but particularly the skills needed for green existing cross-cutting industries.
Link to full step-by-step moonshot policy proposal coming soon.