Smooth Sailing and Cool Cucumbers in Hayward and Oakland

Hayward

Tiffany Haynes, Leader-in-Field-Training

This has been a smooth sailing week! The new changes made to our inventory system and the wonderful development day, during which we bonded was very beneficial for the productivity of our site. Mornings, as well as evenings have been great with plenty of time to get prepared or further smooth out any kinks. The Hayward Heats are on FIRE, leaving behind a BLAZING trail straight to an energy efficient City of Hayward! Many of our clients recommend that all of their friends and family members should take advantage of this service. The clients who are so impressed with the knowledge and professionalism of the ESs that they give back referral sheets completely filled out, sometimes even using the back of the sheet to write more! With such energetic, outgoing, and capable ESs, servicing and outreach have been a breeze.

I am very pleased with the wonderful can-do co-workers I have here in Hayward. Here nothing is impossible; when faced with adversity we do not see roadblocks, only fun competitive obstacles. Everyone here has grown so much from the first day that we started. We learned from our weak points and used the experiences to become better professionals. With four more weeks left I am sure we will gain new experiences to learn from that will help us accomplish GREATNESS. The vision of making a POSITIVE impact is very REAL here, and that is the mission to be completed.

Oakland                                                                                                                                              Julian Davlin, Leader-in-Field-Training

An Energy Specialist provide free and easy tips to help a client save more energy, water and money on bills!

This week in Oakland we were able to service some of the biggest houses our site has seen this summer with our Free Green House Calls.  I had to go out to appointments to drop off extra measures several times because our Energy Specialists (ESs) installed more than 20 light bulbs in a single house! These big houses proved to be no problem for our skilled ESs who finished the calls quickly, efficiently, and without any incident. Lastly, during our Friday professional development session, our Energy Specialists shared techniques used for going into a job interview with confidence and purpose. Overall it was another very successful week. We are looking forward to another full week of Green House Calls! You can sign up for and learn more about our FREE energy assessment and FREE efficient hardware installation here: http://www.tinyurl.com/ghcinfo.

Sharing a Fresh New Start at Dublin and Pleasanton

Dublin                                                                                                                                                     Jason Spooner, Leader-in-Field-Training

The first-ever Dublin CYES crew!

This has been a very productive week of training for the Dublin site. Our energy specialists (ESs) have quickly perfected performing practice Green House Calls. This group of first-time ESs has surpassed my expectations with their professionalism and desire to equip themselves with the knowledge to improve our community. Meanwhile, John and Marie (our incredibly motivated managers) have been booking appointments non-stop to ensure that this is a successful first year for Dublin CYES.

None of this would be possible without the cooperation and patience from the Pleasanton team, who are sharing their office and time. I am looking forward to seeing how this summer unfolds, taking into consideration the limited space occupied by the 22 CYES employees that I’m fortunate enough to work with. Every member of our team is adapting to the fast-paced work environment at Rising Sun, and I am confident in our ability to tackle all challenges that arise this season. I’m proud and happy to be spending my summer as the Leader-In-Field-Training of Dublin’s first CYES season.

Pleasanton                                                                                                                                            Deepak Singh, Leader-in-Field-Training

Dublin and Pleasanton teams playing “Tank and Driver” during training!

The Pleasanton training went really well this week. All of the Energy Specialists (ESs) are very enthusiastic for this job. The training week was long and tiring, but the ESs stayed engaged and focused throughout it. Since we are sharing the office with the Dublin site, we did most of the training and lessons together. This really helped in making the ESs be more comfortable with each other. The ESs are excited to do the actual Green House Calls next week.

A mock GHC (Green House Call) by Pleasanton ESs

Boisterous Beginnings in Oakland and Hayward

Oakland                                                                                                                                          Julian Davlin, Leader-in-Field-Training

Julian Davlin hard at work on the site poster.

This week in Oakland – after an informative day at the main Rising Sun office in Berkeley – our group of Energy Specialists (ESs) worked hard to learn the ins and outs of a Green House Call. They learned about effective elevator pitches, how to install the measures we provide and professionalism in the field. Besides developing these professional aspects, the ESs have worked on teamwork and communication with their peers through presentations, games and icebreakers. Lastly, on Wednesday morning, our site was fortunate to have a public radio station come record our morning activities – a surprising development to say the least, but everyone at the site went about presenting, learning, and laughing, just as they had the day before. By the end of this week our Oakland site will have performed six Green House Calls – a great beginning to the summer program.

Hayward                                                                                                                                         Tiffany Haynes, Leader-in-Field-Training

Training week for the Hayward site went well. All of the eight Energy Specialists (ESs) we have this summer are positive and eager to work at their first green job. A lot of training information was given out over the five day training and I can honestly say that each of my ESs are prepared and knowledgeable about the services given by CYES and capable of teaching others. Thanks to us, there will be a lot of energy saved in Hayward this summer and the ESs will have made a positive impact on the community, as well as themselves. Hayward should get ready for the energy saving storm that will hit the city over the next six weeks and watch out for the eight potential leaders in training for the future! I’m looking forward to keeping you updated each week on our progress. GO HAYWARD HEAT (CYES Hayward site)!

Rising Sun’s Innovative Training Model gets Global Recognition

Rising Sun Energy Center (Rising Sun), a leading workforce development non-profit based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has been selected as one of only fifteen organizations to be featured in Learning a Living: Radical Innovation in Education for Work. The book, which was recently published and is now available on Amazon.com, addresses a critical issue occurring around the world: the failure of education systems to equip students adequately for today’s labor market, and consequently, to become productive members of their communities.

Rising Sun was also invited to be one of the select U.S. organizations to attend the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) 2012 in Doha, Qatar. WISE, which published Learning a Living, hosts an annual meeting of education industry leaders, experts, policy-makers and students from over one hundred countries around the world. The main topic of discussion at WISE 2012 paralleled Learning a Living’s focus of connecting education to the workplace. Rising Sun was featured as a pioneer with real-world solutions to modern education problems. “The education quality must meet the need of the society. But the need of society has no limit,” explained Professor Zhou Qifeng, President of Peking University (Beijing, China), stressing the need for constant improvement in education. WISE 2012 convened over one thousand participants from the sectors of education, government, corporate and not-for-profit to discuss and drive the need for constant renewal, reform and access to education all around the globe to keep up with the rapidly changing needs of modern society.  “We live in a global world and we cannot isolate ourselves from what is happening outside. So we have to prepare ourselves, to prepare our institutions to participate in this global development of education,” said Ms. Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner of Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth.

Since 1994, Rising Sun has been providing hands-on training, career preparation and employment for youth. Rising Sun hires local Bay Area youth and trains them in energy efficiency, water conservation, climate change and professionalism. These young adults are then sent into their own communities to provide homes with free efficiency assessments, upgrades and education. Learning happens not only in the classroom, but on the job as well, as lessons are put into practice in the field.  Rising Sun empowers individuals to be active contributors to their own community, while focusing on environmental stewardship and community engagement. Learning a Living contends, “To become truly adaptable, learners also need to understand where their skills and knowledge fit into a bigger picture, so they can flexibly apply what they know elsewhere. At Rising Sun, educating young people how to do energy upgrades of people’s homes is only one small part of the task at hand; they must also be given a comprehensive sense of why this kind of work is necessary, and be motivated to care.”*

Jodi Pincus, Executive Director of Rising Sun Energy Center, spoke about the organization’s revolutionary education and training model at WISE 2012: “At Rising Sun, we are trying to solve two pressing global issues simultaneously: youth unemployment and climate change. Our approach is to take youth out of the classroom, into the field and equip them with the skills and consciousness to make a positive difference in their lives, their community and the environment. Our goal is to create life-long learners and engaged citizens who will not only make an impact today, but for future generations.”

WISE 2012 was held at the Qatar National Convention Center on November 13-15. WISE was inaugurated by Her Highness Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser, the Chairwoman and driving force behind the Qatar Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to address the challenges facing 21^st century education, to expand dialogue around the world and to implement practical and sustainable solutions.

For more information on Rising Sun Energy Center, please visit http://www.risingsunenergy.org

For more information about WISE 2012, please visit http://www.wise-qatar.org

Learning a Living can be purchased on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Living-Hannon-Valerie/dp/1780937547

*Valerie Hannon, Sarah Gillinson, Leonie Shanks, Learning a Living: Radical Innovation in Education for Work (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2013), 65.

True Sustainability

Sustainability. It’s a hot word in today’s society, but what does it really mean? Being sustainable can mean restoring as much as you use to maintain a balance point for all things. Ecologically this means that we must conserve resources and control production and waste to preserve our environment. But in order to achieve true sustainability for the world, we should attempt to maintain balance not only ecologically, but economically and socially. This means a world where we have not only renewable energy, but where we invest resources into equal education, employment and other opportunities to keep our society and its citizens advancing and thriving. This means that our corporations should not just take money from the masses to allow the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, but instead everyone should pay fair prices for goods and services so businesses will invest back into their employees with fair, livable wages and professional development opportunities. This means reaching out to under-served communities and resilient individuals to educate them for green careers so that the green jobs industry isn’t just ecologically sustainable, but economically and socially responsible as well.

This ideal is why Rising Sun Energy Center exists. Our mission is to empower individuals to achieve environmental and economic sustainability for themselves and their communities. We do this by providing training and employment in the energy efficiency sector for youth and adults with barriers to employment. Our programs train these individuals hands-on in energy efficiency and water conservation and then we continue to assist them in acquiring jobs and hopefully life-long careers in the green industry. Furthermore, we provide home energy retrofits and efficiency upgrades to residents all over the Bay Area. These green services are always either free or discounted heavily due to the fact that we are providing energy savings to homeowners and renters and because we are giving practical on-the-job training to resilient individuals.

So we impact all three facets of sustainability at once; we combat climate change by reducing the amount of CO2 that is released by homes, we help families to save money on their utility bills and home upgrades by offering free and discounted services that reduce their energy and water consumption, and we are helping disenfranchised individuals get the training, education and employment that everyone needs to contribute positively to their community.

If you’d like to do your part to be truly sustainable, check out our energy efficiency services that could get you started on your path to saving energy, water and money with free CFLs and clotheslines, or even subsidized attic insulation, air sealing and weatherization that help employ our green leaders of tomorrow!