On March 2, 2021 Raquel Pinderhughes, founder and director of the Roots of Success Environmental Literacy and Job Training program, met with some of the members of the New York State Green Jobs Corridor project to talk about how the Roots of Success program can compliment existing job training efforts in New York state.
In 2021, the City of Ithaca launched the first city-wide building efficiency and electrification program in the country. This commitment leveraged private capital to retrofit and electrify every building in the city, potentially leading to the creation of more than 1,500 jobs. Binghamton announced two significant clean energy developments that increase the potential for new jobs to more than 8,000. The cities of Elmira, Rochester and Syracuse began to articulate their own decarbonization strategies to meet the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the state’s sweeping climate legislation passed in late 2019. Together, these cities in upstate New York have created a Green Jobs Corridor that will serve over 2.7 million people in New York state. The Green Jobs Corridor will work with the federally recognized Roots of Success Apprenticeship program to develop a regional STEM-based education and emerging-skills training system to prepare youth and adults in the region for jobs and careers in advanced manufacturing, building efficiency, electrification and construction, renewable energy, and materials management.