Arguably the biggest threats to the future of Southeast Louisiana are a mix of increased threats from a changing global climate and an economy that has long left many of its citizens behind.
A local nonprofit named Thrive New Orleans has been fighting to make headway on both issues since its founding in 2008.
Thrive is a workforce training organization, but it’s also an employer in the growing field of environmental resilience as well as an organization that provides a range of support for local entrepreneurs — and then there’s also the work it does providing affordable housing solutions.
Executive Director Chuck Morse — whose background includes more than two decades of work in community engagement, business development, government relations, marketing and strategy — sees the challenges the region faces as opportunities. He is energized by the role his city can play in the emerging industries created by climate change, and if they are handled well, he feels the city could further diversify its economy — even to global leadership status — while also providing real economic advancement to a large section of its population.
Big Partnerships in Action
• Thrive serves as the City of New Orleans’ National Disaster Resilience Partner.
• Ahead of the Super Bowl, Thrive partnered with the Downtown Development District to revitalize Bourbon Street — repairing and replacing historic brickwork and opening tree wells for new plantings.
• The organization was recently selected as an allied partner for EnergySmart, the local residential energy-efficiency program, so we can now make homes more efficient with upgrades like windows and doors.
For Thrive, securing the region’s future begins with an extraordinarily complete approach to workforce training. The organization takes a thorough, multi-tiered approach, with specific concentrations in building construction, green infrastructure and climate resilience.
“It’s holistic, wrap-around, meeting the needs of the individuals,” explained Morse. This includes everything from teaching soft skills like being on time for work to addressing underlying employment barriers such as transportation, housing, food insecurity, even mental health issues.”
After three weeks of soft skills training, training moves on to hard skills. Here Thrive offers a variety of certifications including construction, stormwater management, solar installation and weatherization. In many cases, individualized training can even be tailored to assist participants in realizing their specific work goals.
The training programs are co-designed with employer partners to ensure graduates learn the skills that businesses in these fields demand.
In addition to real-world work experience, trainees — many of whom are economically disadvantaged, some recently released from incarceration — are able to learn and earn at the same time.
“They pay you to learn, that’s the first thing that gets your attention,” said David Bender, who entered Thrive’s workforce training program about three years ago, shortly after he was released from jail. But Bender noted that the program’s value went far beyond financial compensation. Aided by his Thrive connection, Bender now works for the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.
Both Trainer And Employer
While the need for environmental resilience work, both on the commercial and residential side, is high, Morse said there’s currently a lack of employers in the region. Recognizing the needs of the city and the organization’s trainees, the organization created what it calls its “social enterprise component” after the latest Trump administration took office. Thrive secures contracts as either a prime or subcontractor in the environmental resilience sector.
“One reason we created our social enterprise is so people can stay in these fields,” explained Morse. “Our graduates say, ‘Put me in coach, I’m ready to play,’ but the jobs aren’t always there. We keep them from going elsewhere for jobs or from going into non-career-path jobs because they need income now.”
While Thrive continues to receive funding from federal, state and local governments, along with foundation and corporate support, the earned income is essential to survival. The outside revenues help the organization charge competitive rates for its work, while also paying livable wages to its 25-member staff and its trainees.
Fortunately, opportunities on the local front are expanding rapidly. Recent New Orleans City Council legislation requires that all new parking lots include permeable paving. Similarly, the city is requiring new construction to retain a certain amount of rainwater on the property. And the long-awaited drainage fee (or property fee, as Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration is now presenting it) will create further incentives and opportunities for green infrastructure.
In the residential sector, Thrive is helping area homeowners make their homes stronger and more efficient. Some of the work is done on building interiors, such as weatherizing, installing smart thermometers, adding insulation, and sealing and even replacing doors and windows. Exterior work focuses largely on installing green infrastructure like rain gardens, bioswales and permeable paving.
As a result, homeowners see energy bills go down as well as the threat of flooding — not just for the individual home, but for the community. At the same time, trainees receive, in Morse’s words, “hands-on practical experience on various job sites.”
On the commercial side, recently Thrive completed an extensive installation at the Good Shepherd School in the Ninth Ward that included landscaping, installing rain gardens, bioswales and native plants and trees, and adding permeable paving to further reduce the amount of water running off the property and into the city drainage system.
ENTREPRENEURS
While Thrive has a strong focus on starting people off on jobs with real career paths, there is equal emphasis on the second component of the solution — helping graduates launch their own businesses, something that goes well beyond just providing some initial equipment.
Bender’s responsibilities at the Sewerage and Water Board — which range from maintenance of existing lines to installation of new infrastructure — further his knowledge of stormwater management, which in turn helps with Gray Arrow, a stormwater management installation business he started after completing the Thrive program and with the organization’s support.
“Thrive is not a place where they just teach you these things and let you go,” he continued. “They help the whole person. Then they help you get a job, they help you start your own business…Anything you need, they’re there to help.”
The organization’s assistance, however, extends far beyond just helping its own trainees.
“We help small businesses with back-office operations, obtaining business credit as compared to personal credit, understanding customers, connecting to capital, connecting them to workforce,” explained Bernadette Carriere, Thrive’s director of green business. “While we are primarily in the green infrastructure space, stormwater mitigation and management, we are working with business owners in areas like food services and auto body repair as well.”
Carriere said she is particularly enthused by the business opportunities available in the environmental sector and the organization’s ability to provide training in such marketable skills.
“Throughout the U.S. and around the world, we’re having issues with cities and towns flooding that didn’t flood before,” she noted. “Figuring out how to mitigate that water, how to protect residential and commercial buildings and city infrastructure, that’s transferrable everywhere.”
Carriere also noted that while much of the focus is on the installation of new projects, “there are opportunities for the maintenance side of it as well. Landscaping, permeable paving, these all need to be kept up.”
Thinking Small on a Big Problem
Another aspect of resiliency where Thrive is a player is affordable housing. In particular, the organization has been working with the “tiny houses” concept. This developed in part due to the housing challenges some of the trainees were facing, which sometimes extended into homelessness.
“We’re working on this in partnership with the New Orleans Career Center, a trade school for high school students, including building construction,” said Morse. “They are building these homes as part of the curriculum, but they need placement for them.”
The collaboration has the Career Center turning the completed houses over to Thrive for placement on empty lots around the city. Morse cited one instance where eight of the tiny houses are going to one site, which not only adds to workforce housing but addresses a vital but poorly understood component of the homelessness issue.
Many people do not realize that within the street encampments, a strong sense of community is often created, and dispersing individuals into scattered housing breaks up that community and is not infrequently resisted by its members. Being able to cluster the tiny houses allows that community to be maintained, which also enables the residents to continue to support each other as they transition.
Thrive-ing: By the Numbers
200+: people trained in green-infrastructure workforce skills since 2017
80+: small businesses supported through the Green Academy entrepreneurship program
60+: homes served by Thrive as prime contractor in Gentilly (25 self-performed, 35 subcontracted) – homeowner education and reducing flooding through bioswales, rain gardens, trees and permeable pavers
200+: trees planted in the Upper 9th Ward
922: tons of concrete removed and 12,000+ square feet of sod installed at Keller Park
Spreading the Word
Just as this aspect of the housing issue often flies below the public radar, understanding of the importance and complexities of climate change mitigation still needs to be advanced. While organizations like the Water Collaborative (on whose board Morse has served) have helped increase residents’ knowledge of stormwater management and green infrastructure, more awareness is needed – and again, Thrive is working on the problem.
“We have an educational component working in the schools and with the New Orleans Job Corps,” said Carriere. “We teach about various interventions and how they offer opportunities for employment. We also do onsite interventions at some of the schools and engage the kids in the work.
“If you like being outside instead of working at a desk job, this is a great place to work,” she pointed out. “You get to smell the fresh air and build something beautiful!”
Morse noted that Thrive’s programs have an almost inherent educational impact.
“We create ambassadors to change how we deal with climate change, people from all walks of life. They can educate their grandparents, educate the kids, educate their communities.”
Bender is a perfect example of this.
“With what I learned in Thrive, it’s important to me to help mitigate the situation with drainage in the city,” he stated. “I want people to know that we are helping to hold water on their properties so that it doesn’t go into the drainage system.”
Morse made a similar point.
“People need to understand that the heat island effect is real, that it is warmer in some parts of the city than others. We help educate our population to do their own mitigation, like weatherization and planting trees.”
This points to another key intersection, that of physical infrastructure and human infrastructure. The latter is necessary to create the former, and Morse feels positive on both accounts.
“The New Orleans workforce is pretty solid, and we’re training folks up so they can make a good living with a career pathway,” he stated. “You see all these ribbon-cuttings taking place, and you’re going to see a big increase in job opportunities in construction, in stormwater management and in climate resilience.
“We have a major problem with flooding in our city,” he continued, “but it’s also an economic opportunity. Installing stormwater management is paramount to the future of our city. We’re already a leader because we’ve been doing this for a long time, but we need to do it in a more systematic way. There is so much work to be done.”
In turn, this leads to what Morse believes is the overarching solution to the challenges of resiliency.
“People who have a career path in the city help make the city more resilient,” he proclaimed. “Our work creates a resilient workforce so people can work in the city they were born in. We believe that everybody should have an opportunity here, that the city should have an opportunity to be resilient, that our children should have an opportunity to grow up and succeed here.
“We want the people in our city who are facing these problems to be part of their own solution.”
