2022 – Present
OAEC has teamed up with North Bay Jobs with Justice (NBJwJ) and Resilience Works (owned by the nonprofit Resilience Force) in their effort to train and employ immigrant and Indigenous farmworkers in Sonoma County for dignified climate resilience careers with family sustaining wages. Since 2022, we have co-hosted a series of workforce development trainings at OAEC’s 70-acre Field Campus with NBJwJ and Resilience Works. Offered in Spanish, these trainings have focused on fire mitigation and vegetation management, wildlife habitat restoration, and upland Fuels to Flows waterway restoration techniques.
This ongoing project emerged as a way to support landworkers (“trabajadores de la tierra”) seeking to transition into meaningful, well-paying ecological restoration jobs based in workers’ own Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Early on, we also recognized the widespread demand for a larger base of skilled ecological restoration workers to help heal legacy impacts of extractive land use and mitigate and adapt to climate change. In Sonoma County, landworkers from Mexico and Central America are the backbone of the wine and agricultural industry and day-labor workforce – from gardening and landscaping, to home hardening and hazardous fuels removal. As landworkers continue to transition into this growing sector of climate mitigation, NBJwJ and Resilience Works are uplifting the need to invest in education, training, and capacity-building for workers on the frontlines of recovery and resilience work.
NBJwJ’s collaborations with OAEC and dozens of other partners across the county led to the creation of Resilience Works, a for-profit company that trains and employs individuals from NBJwJ’s membership. Rather than just“fighting the bad” to win safer conditions and better pay from companies, Resilience Works is committed to “building the good” as a mission-driven labor brokerage that pays family sustaining wages and provides comprehensive training to its workers. We are honored to continue collaborating with NBJwJ and Resilience Works through hands-on restoration projects around the county, such as vegetation management and upland gully restoration at Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park and Open Space Preserve.
More Resources:
- Read OAEC’s Blog Post “Why We Can’t Build a Fire-Resilient Future Without Worker Justice” about our ongoing collaboration with North Bay Jobs with Justice.
- Read YES Magazine’s article, “From Farmworkers to Land Healers,” featuring the worker-led struggle to reclaim their labor towards ecologically-regenerative and economically-viable jobs in land restoration.
