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The Sustainable South Bronx held a ceremony for 20 students graduating from its Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (BEST) Academy on Feb. 2. The program prepares students for “Green collar” jobs.
“At the start of the class, two people, just me and one other person, had ideas about being an entrepreneur, but by the end, many people were talking about making a difference in their community, talking about environmental justice, and making better decisions for themselves as far as their environmental footprint and their lives,” said Rashard Dyess-Lane, a BEST Academy graduate, to Rebecca Manski, Communications Consultant, in an interview.
On February 2, another 20 students graduated from the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (BEST) Academy, run out of Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx).
The program gives instruction in areas ranging from wetland restoration to ecology, from green roof installation to asbestos handling, from job readiness to dance. Yes, that’s right: dance.
According to Dyess-Lane, dance class was the most memorable element of the program.
“We did salsa, merengue, jazz, we did ballet,” said Dyess-Lane. “[It was memorable] watching people who you would never expect in a million years to dance, forcing themselves to both work out and dance. It was really good for building camaraderie.”
The Academy was started by Annette Williams in 2003, and was far-sighted: few other programs like this existed at the time, and few people were talking about “green collar” jobs at the time.
Since then, the BEST Academy has graduated over 20 classes and adapted to changes in the economy. The BEST Academy tracks its graduates for three years following graduation. So far 82 percent of their graduates are currently employed.
According to Manski, there was a special emphasis placed on entrepreneurship in the past year. Dyess-Lane is one graduate who appeared to embrace that emphasis. He is proposing the development of an energy management system that would allow business owners to monitor, control, and automate their energy consumption. His business is called AdvancedParadigms.com.
While entrepreneurship has recently received extra attention, the program has had graduates go on to work for organizations and city agencies like the Central Park Conservancy, MillionTrees NYC, the Parks Department, Green Apple Corp., Woodlawn Cemetery, the EPA, OnSolar, Natural Resource Group, the Bronx River Alliance, the Bronx Zoo, and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Upon graduation, BEST helps its graduates find job placements. According to Miquela Craytor, SSBX Executive Director, BEST is planning its first “employer breakfast,” another initiative to link potential employers to their graduates.
The program itself is 17 weeks long, and essentially a full-time commitment. Students may come from any borough, but the training takes place in the South Bronx, and the majority of students come from the South Bronx. Most of the students are low-income.
While the program graduates many more men than women, BEST Academy highly encourages women to apply. In the last graduating class, three of the 20 graduates were women. Manski said that these numbers are typical. In the blue collar industries, the percentage of women is even lower.
The program’s local focus on the South Bronx meshes well with SSBx’s mission of bringing “issues of environmental justice to the forefront of community consciousness, and to begin to repair and reverse decades of environmental degradation.” The idea is that residents are trained in economically sustainable practices, and can contribute to the revitalization of their own neighborhood, which they have a vested interest in improving.
At the beginning of the program, students take a “Toxic Tour” with BEST Academy Administrator Marta Rodriguez. The tour highlights environmental hazards within the South Bronx.
Rodriguez addressed the graduates at their graduation ceremony: “Like I said on the Toxic Tour from the beginning – for me you all are heroes, you’re the ones who improve my neighborhood, make a difference for everyone else who lives here, and you show you don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to make a change.”
For more information, visit www.ssbx.org/index.php?link=33#best.
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