Employment & Training

Rebuild Green and Common Ground's Invest program are working with low-income residents of New Orleans and with skilled volunteers to teach construction trade skills, provide employment, and revive neighborhoods hard-hit by storms, flooding and neglect.

The training of community members from the Common Ground Woodlands apartment-complex and the surrounding neighborhood, started when Malik Rahim and others of Common Ground began to improve the complex in late May of 2006. Nearly forty people now have jobs and scores of apartments have been rehabilitated and re-opened up for residence. With the housing shortage in New Orleans, Common Ground's Invest workforce training program is helping to providing a much needed trained workforce of local residents, and to help restore desperately needed housing.

In addition, sites in the Upper and Lower 9th Wards will soon employ Rebuild Green/ Common Ground Invest workers in putting up safe, sound housing that takes advantage of renewable-energy features. Particular emphasis will be put on employing residents of low-income communities and on employing ex-offenders who otherwise have difficulty in finding jobs.