In the News

Who Will Be Left Behind By the Green Job Boom?

Published by Good Magazine: May 11, 2009
By Siobhan O'Connor

Living Cities—a collaboration of of the world's biggest foundations and financial institutions—is leading the charge to ensure low-income workers aren't counted out of the green job boom. It's hero's work, but it's not going to be easy...

One organization, however, hopes to flip those odds. Living Cities is a public-private-philanthropic collaboration that focuses on urban solutions that also bring low-income people out of the economic and social fringes, and they are now focusing their efforts on the green job boom...

Based in Harlem, New York, with another office in Washington, D.C., Living Cities was founded in 1991 with the goal to help knit together various actors in major cities, while also encouraging them to focus on equitable solutions. With members from J.P. Morgan, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Deutsche Bank, the Ford Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to name only a few, Living Cities has invested more than $543 million in 23 cities, leveraging that investment at a ratio of 29 to 1. In 15 years, Living Cities has created more than $15 billion worth of assets, all of which have directly helped low-income people. That's meant funding schools and daycare programs, job outreach, and training efforts—the cradle-to-career approach.

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