Weatherize DC – Making the Green Economy happen

This afternoon I met with Sam and Sarah from The DC Project’s ‘Weatherize DC‘ campaign. Both come from a political organising background (they were the ones working on the Obama campaign that you kept reading about on HuffPo…)

Weatherize DC is a community engagement campaign around home efficiency – working with labour, industry and environmental groups to create a model for community-led weatherisation efforts. To get a sense of their work – have a watch of Judy’s story.

What sets them apart from the usual energy efficiency efforts – is that they focus on bringing in the lessons from political organising into this new context. They bring together communities + local groups, and use volunteers to get the word out. This community engagement is what they’ve identified as the missing piece in getting energy efficiency drives to have a real and lasting impact.

What’s really exciting about their work is that their political organising is being used to create demand for weatherisation – and therefore green jobs. They’re even beginning to use their brand as a way of ensuring that these jobs are good jobs (wage, insurance etc) and that it builds trust from the consumer-end as well.

Their model has become the standard for other efforts around the country – they even influenced national legislation on where bail-out money can go to include the community engagement element.

Both Sam and Sarah talked about the joy of seeing the impacts of their work – both the insulated homes, but mostly the jobs actually being created by demand from the market. Helping design training programmes, and then seeing graduates from those programmes actually finding work is proof that the green economy is happening : )

What’s difficult

• Getting people from the initial conversation (and overcoming the myths!) to the point where they get professionals into their house and get the work done
• The balance between volunteer-driven work, and being an organisation that is setting out to create decently-paid green jobs
• Ensuring that weatherisation work does not become a race to the bottom – with falling standards, low wages and no healthcare

Top Tips

• Have a commitment to equity from the very beginning
• Don’t try to re-create the wheel. If someone is already doing it (and doing it well) – find a way to work with them
• Listen. Take the time to do a really deep needs assessment, understand why people are interested, build relationships.

Contact

info@thedcproject.org