Climate & Environmental Resilience Guide

Posted by Service Year Alliance on June 27, 2023

With Congress’ historic investments to support climate and environmental resilience (C&E resilience) through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, we are at a pivotal moment to ensure that, through service years, young people have an opportunity to leverage their unique talents to uplift community resilience while also gaining the skills and experience they need to successfully secure careers within the growing green economy.

To ensure these objectives are met, Service Year Alliance formed a multi-year partnership with the Cisco Foundation to launch our Climate Project that intentionally examined how service year programming can be further leveraged as a human capital solution to effectively combat the impacts of climate change and develop the next generation of leaders to advance C&E resilience efforts.

Through hosting targeted conversations with national service programs, green sector employer associations, workforce development partners, and other organizations and agencies advancing C&E resilience, Service Year Alliance identified a high level of alignment between service year programming and the effort to address climate change. To further examine key areas of opportunity, Service Year Alliance then formed a learning cohort made-up of standout service year programs advancing three diverse program models: Energy Efficiency, Community Capacity Building, and Rural Resilience.

In addition to having an intentional opportunity to learn from one another, these program partners assisted Service Year Alliance in defining key components of program design and implementation that have been shown to produce successful programs and achieve a high level of impact for both corps members as well as the communities being served. These learnings were then consolidated into the following resource, the Climate & Environmental Resilience Guide, which is intended to expedite the process of either standing-up new programming or expanding and enhancing current programming within our three C&E Resilience focus areas.

Learn more and access the guide.