Green Economy Leadership Training

The mission of GELT is to organize around the deployment of community-based solutions to targeted regions. We facilitate the transition to a green economy, while empowering leaders with the skills, tools and experience to build, live and work within the newly constructed frameworks. We develop visible, functional economic and social structures that reflect sustainable, just and equitable principles. GELT calls Highland Park, Michigan home.

This summer, 20 participants are being trained in technical green economy skills and social entrepreneurship. 

Participants have been split into 4 “green industry” teams so that they can gain a deeper expertise in a particular field of the green economy. Over the course of the summer each team will be implementing a project in their respective field. Each team has been paired with a staff member or volunteer of the program to receive mentor-ship in their respective field.

Through a combination of skills training and internship days projects will be implemented over the course of the 9 week training program.

Over the course of the summer we will be implementing 4 core projects as part of our program:

• Cultivating 1/4 acre vacant lot into an urban farm in Highland Park, MI.
• Building a 1.5 kw off-grid solar PV system for Food Field, a 4 acre farm in mid-town Detroit.
• Starting the Highland Park Farmers Market, scheduled to open in August.
• Upgrading an existing kitchen at St. Benedict's Church in Highland Park into a commercial kitchen small food producer incubator. 

Each project is part of the larger Green Economy Leadership Training program. This summer, 20 participants are being trained in technical green economy skills and social entrepreneurship. Part of their experience is to build out these projects.

Conceived in February of 2010, the Green Economy Leadership Training (GELT) has developed into an essential deployment mechanism for both young leaders and community redevelopment as part of the transition into the clean energy economy. While constructing new social and economic structures, GELT integrates community resources, including residents, businesses, clergy, and political infrastructure to ensure collective rebuilding that accurately represents the culture and diversity of our neighborhoods. 

GELT focuses on youth, as this generation will be the ones absorbing the initial and long-lasting effects of detrimental societal and economic practices of the past. GELT focuses on empowering youth with tangible, permanent and visible solutions. We recognize the opportunity to commence an era of organizing around deployment of community based solutions that can be examples and pillars of a new economy. This organizing strategy breaks conventional frames and puts the emphasis around deployment of community-based solutions that empower individuals and communities. In addition to addressing unmet community needs, this strategy also seeks to train individuals in how to build, live and work in new, equitable and just frameworks.