Transcript:
Learning new deals – and being a newcomer to the job site – can be hard…especially when no one else is there looking like you.
Native American women working in solar energy may know this feeling well.
Hayden: “They may be the only women, they may be the only brown people… in the installers they are going to work with.”
Alicia Hayden and Red Cloud Renewable are home-led nonprofits located in South Dakota. The team conducts a free solar workforce training program, which includes training programs specifically for Native American women.
For graduate Jacinta's goggles, learning with other Indigenous women creates friendship.
Goggles: “You feel a certain kinship…I think the ability to feel comfortable with each other is a big factor in all our success because we all want each other to succeed.”
Hayden said the participants left programs related to other participants and mentors who already worked in the field.
Hayden: “In their phones, they have the names of 15 new friends they just made, some of them Native American women who have worked in the industry for 10 years, just phone calls or text messages.”
So even if they are the only Indigenous women on the work site, they feel supported, connected and lonely.
Report Credit: Sarah Kennedy/Chavobart Digital Media
Repost our articles for free under the Creative Commons license, online or in print.
